The New International Encyclopædia/Frederic, Harold

FRED'ERIC, (1856-98). An American novelist and journalist. He was born in Utica, N. Y., August 19, 1856, and was London correspondent of the New York Times from 1884 till his premature death in Hornby, England, October 19, 1898. He was educated in Utica, worked at journalism there, in Albany, and in New York; but won distinction for novels, chiefly of rural life in central New York, written after his going to England. His first important story, Seth's Brother's Wife (1887), was followed by The Lawton Girl (1890); In the Valley (1890), a story of 1777; The Return of the O'Mahoney (1892); The Copperhead (1894), a story of the Civil War; and Marsena (1895), a collection of keenly humorous character stories. All these, however, were surpassed by The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), a brilliant analysis of religious life in the American middle class, minutely realistic in detail, clever in conversation, and unfailing in psychic insight, immediately recognized by the public as a human document. His last works, March Hares (1896), Gloria Mundi (1898), and In the Marketplace (1899), were less significant. The New Exodus (1892) was a study of Anti-Semitism, the result of a visit to Russia, undertaken in 1891.