Books: Rebel Romance

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Significance. Strangest fact about Miss Ravenel's Conversion is that it has been forgotten for so long. Battle scenes like the storming of Port Hudson are superior to those of Stephen Crane; the humor, bewilderment and passion of Miss Lillie make Hawthorne's and Cooper's damsels seem moral abstractions. Although, in its 466 pages, the book sometimes seems labored, and antiquated asides slow down its fast story, De Forest's wit picks it up, springs out in the plain talk of soldiers, his comments on the appallingly dull conversations of people in love, on the mores of the Puritan North and the Cavalier South. Says Yale's Professor Gordon S. Haight, who believes that De Forest's characters are unsurpassed in U. S. fiction: "It was an unfortunate moment to launch a realistic story of the war. At that time the bereaved were looking for comfort in such works as Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The Gates Ajar; and those who still wished to read about battles wanted them tidied up for the drawing room." But another factor is at work in re-establishing the value of such books as De Forest's. More important than the change in taste is the current re-examination of U. S. literature represented in works like Van Wyck Brooks's The Flowering of New England. That re-examination is burying many an unread bigwig, demonstrating that many a forgotten novelist has more to say to moderns. First discovery that is likely to prove popular, Miss Ravenel's Conversion should speed the search.