Long Fiction:
The Celebrity, 1898
Richard Carvel, 1899
The Crisis, 1901
The Crossing, 1904
Coniston, 1906
Mr. Crewe’s Career, 1908
A Modern Chronicle, 1910
The Inside of the Cup, 1913
A Far Country, 1915
The Dwelling-Place of Light, 1917
Short Fiction:
Mr. Keegan’s Elopement, 1903
The Faith of Frances Craniford, 1917
Drama:
The Title-Mart, pb. 1905
Dr. Jonathan, pb. 1919
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, novelist Winston Churchill was considered an earnest critic of American society. In this regard, he remains interesting, though newer and more penetrating social insights have superseded his.
Churchill was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 10, 1871. His education was completed at the U.S. Naval Academy, although he never served in the Navy. Private means, instead, made it possible for him to devote his life to writing. Inspired by the American past, he began as a writer of historical novels; The Crisis and Richard Carvel were immediate successes. Churchill was widely read until the 1920’s, when new literary techniques and concerns made him seem old-fashioned. In 1895, Churchill moved to New Hampshire and married. Active in the political life of his state, he was a member of the legislature from 1903 to 1905, and he ran unsuccessfully on the Progressive ticket as a candidate for governor.
Churchill’s later novels have a tone of moral earnestness which gave substance to the questions he chose to present. When he tried to resolve the dilemmas he set forth for himself, however, he fell back upon the genteel and the romantic. His attitude toward the American democratic tradition was dualistic; the wealthy in his novels were usually superior in taste and even in morals. His novels were a reflection of the intoxicating growth and wealth of the period, which seemed to hold solutions for the old dilemmas. Humankind could control the environment and foresee new ethics.
Thus, though in his own time Churchill was regarded as a reformer, his books now gather dust on the shelf: His is a voice from long ago. He concerned himself, with the exception of his early historical novels, with then-current problems of divorce, religion, and class relationships, but to these problems he–as a product and endorser of the status quo–had no very compelling answer. Nevertheless, as late as 1924, his rank was fourth in a list of the ten “greatest” writers since 1900.