The Author of "An Oklahoma Romance"

The author of "An Oklahoma Romance," the story of a love affair complicated with a land claim, which the Century Company are publishing, is Mrs. Helen Churchill Candee. She is a New Yorker of a family that has been well known in the metropolis for several generations. Her mother, who recently died in Paris, was Mrs. Mary Churchill Hungerford, a woman of many accomplishments and with social gifts of a most uncommon order. Her grandfather, William Churchill, besides being prominent as a merchant in New York in the earlier half of the nineteenth century, was a noted wit and also famous for the largeness of his hospitality. Mrs. Candee had served an apprenticeship to letters before attempting a novel, and for several years past her name has often been seen attached to essays and short stories in the various magazines. Besides this, she has edited a magazine, and been an editorial writer on one of the great metropolitan dailies. It is therefore not exactly a novice who tells this story of the Southwest, with which she is thoroughly well acquainted, having lived in Oklahoma a year or more. As the story shows she was a most sympathetic and receptive observer, although the conditions of life were so radically different from anything with which she had previously been acquainted. This, in a measure, accounts for the freshness of the impressions left on her mind by happenings which may seem sordid and commonplace enough where they are usual. It is a bit of painting with contemporaneous hlstory for both form and color and has unusual value and interest.