Chicago Pop Fiction Writers

The standard literary histories of Chicago usually commence with Joseph Kirkland and his novel The McVeys published at the end of the 1880’s. It was the start of a literary movement that came to be known as the Chicago School of Literature.   It is as if nothing was happening in literary callow Chicago before Kirkland and the Chicago School writers. In fact, during the 1880’s a passenger on a railroad crossing the American heartland was more likely to be reading a book published in Chicago than “literature” published in Boston or New York. There was a small community of popular fiction writers living in and around Chicago who fed the growing industry of literary publishers in Chicago. They were little known then and completely forgotten today; yet they were pioneers in the melodrama genre of true detective stories.

For more about the gaslight era popular fiction writers of Chicago continue here.