ABSTRACT
As authors who immersed themselves in their subject matter, American naturalists contributed to the development of literary journalism. In nonfiction works such as Stephen Crane’s “In the Depths of a Coal Mine,” Theodore Dreiser’s Twelve Men, Frank Norris’s sketches for The Wave, Willa Cather’s The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy, and Jack London’s The People of the Abyss, naturalists embraced their roles as reporters dedicated to social causes. And in their fictional works such as An American Tragedy, Maggie, McTeague, “Paul’s Case,” and Martin Eden, these writers pushed the limits of fiction by drawing on newspaper stories, including taboo accounts of violent crime, poverty, sex, and greed, subjects that had not been the purview of American fiction. In developing and expanding literary genres, in their unique amalgamations of fact and fiction, American naturalists pointed the way toward the rise of New Journalism, creative nonfiction, and literary journalism, genres that move beyond binary divisions of fiction and nonfiction, of objective and subjective.
