Volume 3 | Genre-Tales and the Alcohol Novels

This volume contains four examples of the lighter fiction he wrote to pay his bills in the Feminine Fifties, all lit up by humor and close observations of the genteel life of 1850’s New York. But two of the three serial novels presented here, unusual for their time, treat alcohol as a festive source of humor and interesting states of consciousness. The third novel, The Household Angel, was his masterpiece, a portrayal of alcoholism and its effects on family and society. It signaled the arrival of a major talent, who unfortunately died before his full promise as a novelist could be fulfilled.