Other editions of book The Great God Success: A Novel

David Graham Phillips (October 31, 1867 – January 24, 1911) was an American novelist and journalist of the muckraker tradition.Phillips was born in Madison, Indiana. After graduating from high school, Phillips entered Asbury College (now DePauw University) — following which he received a degree from Princeton University in 1887. After completing his education, Phillips worked as a newspaper reporter in Cincinnati, Ohio, before moving on to New York City where he was employed as a reporter for The Sun from 1890 to 1893, then columnist and editor with the New York World until 1902. In his spare time, he wrote a novel, The Great God Success, that was published in 1901. The royalty income enabled him to work as a freelance journalist while continuing to write fiction. Writing articles for various prominent magazines, he began to develop a reputation as a competent investigative journalist. Phillips' novels often commented on social issues of the day and frequently chronicled events based on his real-life journalistic experiences. He was considered a Progressive and for exposing corruption in the Senate he was labelled a muckraker.

"Your college paper, I suppose?""No, I never wrote even a letter to the editor.""Took prizes for essays?""No, I never wrote if I could help it.""But you like to write?""I'd like to learn to write.""You say you are two months out of college -- what college?""Yale.""Hum -- I thought Yale men went into something commercial; law or banking or railroads. 'Leave hope of fortune behind, ye who enter here' is over the door of this profession.""We pay fifteen dollars a week at the start." "I haven't the money-making instinct.""Couldn't you make it twenty?"The Managing Editor of the NEWS-RECORD turned slowly in his chair until his broad chest was full-front toward the young candidate for the staff. He lowered his florid face slowly until his double chin swelled out over his low "stick-up" collar. Then he gradually raised his eyelids until his amused blue eyes were looking over the tops of his glasses, straight into Howard's eyes. "Why?" he asked."Why should we?"

David Graham Phillips (1867-1911), was an American journalist and novelist. After completing his education, Phillips worked as a newspaper reporter in Cincinnati, Ohio before moving on to New York City where he was employed as a columnist and editor with the New York World until 1902. In his spare time, he wrote a novel, The Great God Success that was published in 1901. The book sold well enough that his royalty income allowed him to work as a freelance journalist while dedicating himself to writing fiction. Considered a progressive, Phillips' novels often commented on social issues of the day and frequently chronicled events based on his real-life journalistic experiences. Phillips' reputation as a muckraker cost him his life when, in January 1911, he was shot and killed in New York City. His assassin was a deranged musician who believed that Phillips' novel, The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig (1909), had cast literary aspersions on his family. Following Phillips' death, his sister Carolyn organized his final manuscript for posthumous publication as Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1917), which was later made into a popular film.

"Your college paper, I suppose?""No, I never wrote even a letter to the editor.""Took prizes for essays?""No, I never wrote if I could help it.""But you like to write?""I'd like to learn to write.""You say you are two months out of college -- what college?""Yale.""Hum -- I thought Yale men went into something commercial; law or banking or railroads. 'Leave hope of fortune behind, ye who enter here' is over the door of this profession.""We pay fifteen dollars a week at the start." "I haven't the money-making instinct.""Couldn't you make it twenty?"The Managing Editor of the NEWS-RECORD turned slowly in his chair until his broad chest was full-front toward the young candidate for the staff. He lowered his florid face slowly until his double chin swelled out over his low "stick-up" collar. Then he gradually raised his eyelids until his amused blue eyes were looking over the tops of his glasses, straight into Howard's eyes. "Why?" he asked."Why should we?"

"He is sure to be a big figure in American literature." -The Saturday Evening Post "In the story, Howard, the hero, two months out of Yale, finds employment with inadequate returns on the reportorial staff of the News Record (The New York World) and goes to live in this house, where he meets the girl Alice and experiences one of life's poignant tragedies. David Graham Phillips, in writing 'The Great God Success,' was trying his prentice hand...there is a curious echo of Balzac's 'Pere Goriot' in one paragraph of the tale....As has been indicated, it was 'The Great God Success' that led Phillips to take the decisive step It was against the wishes and advice of many of his closest friends. They pointed out that it was giving up a comfortable position in journalism for the uncertainties of fiction....It was indeed a step that called for courage." -The Bookman "Shows the pen of a man of imagination with brain trained to alertness, and here also was the human quality and the ethical impulse....Illustrates the versatility of the author and his capacity to do great work." -The Arena "One of the modern sort of prolific writers." -Princeton Alumni Weekly "Courage, especially in our over-refined times, is perhaps more valuable than style. To the quality of courage, indeed, that of style has still a chance to come. It is this that is likely to keep in remembrance the name of David Graham Phillips as an American novelist. In a time when, despite the great number of writers and the higher average of technical skill, our novelists were not so adequately depicting their time and place as did, say, the two Edgars, Fawcett and Saltus, or even the earliest efforts of Henry James and Mr. Howells, Phillips came up out of the journalistic ranks conspicuously determined to write, as forthrightly as possible, a candid chronicle of the world he lived in. Candor and courage remained, to the end, his distinguishing virtues. He discovered the sinister side to our conduct of affairs political and financial; having done that, he moved on to what took still greater courage: to discover to herself, and the world in general, the shortcomings of the American woman, whom so many artists in pen and pencil conspire to figure as humanity's supreme development in our time. He did this, realizing that woman dominates America's taste for fiction as for all the other arts. Devoid of charm in manner, he so honestly was telling the truth as he saw it, that - like England in some of her campaigns - he 'blundered through somehow' to a secure position among the bestsellers....He was obviously coming constantly to a larger outlook upon life, though he had not yet sloughed off a certain jingoistic parochialism permitting him to utter some essentially journalistic commonplaces about foreign aristocracies." -The Forum CONTENTS I. THE CANDIDATE FROM YALE II. THE CITY EDITOR RECONSIDERS III. A PARK ROW CELEBRITY IV. IN THE EDGE OF BOHEMIA V. ALICE VI. IN A BOHEMIAN QUICKSAND VII. A LITTLE CANDLE GOES OUT VIII. A STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL IX. AMBITION AWAKENS X. THE ETERNAL MASCULINE XI. TRESPASSING XII. MAKING THE MOST OF A MONTH XIII. RECKONING WITH DANVERS XIV. THE NEWS-RECORD GETS A NEW EDITOR XV. YELLOW JOURNALISM XVI. MR. STOKELY IS TACTLESS XVII. A WOMAN AND A WARNING XVIII. HOWARD EXPLAINS HIS MACHINE XIX. "I MUST BE RICH." XX. ILLUSION XXI. WAVERING XXII. THE SHENSTONE EPISODE XXIII. EXPANDING AND CONTRACTING XXIV. "MR. VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH." XXV. THE PROMISED LAND XXVI. IN POSSESSION XXVII. THE HARVEST XXVIII. SUCCESS

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