Knut Hamsun's novel The Growth of the Soil won the Norwegian writer a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. English translator W. W. Worster summed up the novel with these words:

"It is the life story of a man in the wilds, the genesis and gradual development of a homestead, the unit of humanity, in the unfilled, uncleared tracts that still remain in the Norwegian Highlands."

"It is an epic of earth; the history of a microcosm. Its dominant

Kirk Munroe was a well-traveled writer and journalist who was born in Wisconsin, educated in Massachusetts, began his career in New York City, and finally settled in Florida. Once there, Munroe's proximity to Cuba likely influenced the point of view he employs in "Forward, March", a large part of which details the efforts of an American agent in Cuba during the war.

Regarded as one of Arnold Bennett's finest works, The Old Wives' Tale was first published in 1908. It tells the story of sisters Constance and Sophia Baines, both very different from one another, and follows their lives from youth into old age. Bennett's inspiration was an encounter in a Parisian restaurant: "an old woman came into the restaurant to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous