SOME NOTES ON EARLY AMERICAN FICTION: KELROY WAS THERE Harrison T. Meserole Pennsylvania State University Even before July 4, 1776, the date we are celebrating this year with such elan and eclat, American fiction had begun to be written and published, followed shortly thereafter by the first American criticism of American fiction. I use both terms—fiction and criticism—in the full knowledge that to many historians of American literature the phrase "early American fiction and criticism" engenders images not of aesthetics or ideas but instead of something akin to a kitchen midden. Nonetheless, I am convinced that in this Bicentennial year, we stand at a challenging point in our study of eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury fiction and criticism written by earnest, assiduous men and women with astoundingly prolific, if sometimes inept, propensities. What I intend, therefore, is to propose three directions our studies of early American fiction may take to meet this challenge. Much remains to be done, despite the now impressive number of books and essays on Charles Brockden Brown and a few other early novelists, and despite— perhaps, indeed, because of—Henri Petter's compendious, and I should add, indispensable book published just six years ago. One thing we must do is explore more fully the contents of our literary and general magazines published before 1850. In this connection , scholars of my generation and, let us hope, some others too, will have made the small linguistic transformation necessary to reveal the mild pun in my title, for those who do take up this gage and begin systematic scanning of these early periodicals will find that Kilroy has been there before you. In this context Kilroy is, of course, not the ubiquitous and mysterious and elusive creation of World War II American GI's but is rather a courteously conceived pseudonym for some scholars who have read these early magazines for specific purposes and who have mined real gold: my esteemed friend and colleague, the indefatigable Burton Pollin, who has, I am ready to wager, looked at every page of every American magazine and newspaper (and probably every French and British one as well) published after 1825 in his continuing search for material by and on Edgar Allan Poe; Lewis Leary, and in the field of journalism, Philip Marsh, who have done the same for 2 Harrison T. Meserole Philip Freneau; Ralph Aderman for James Kirke Paulding; and some years ago, Nelson F. Adkins, who searched many an unturned page for Fitz-Greene Halleck; and Kendall Taft, who exhumed among other materials the writings of the early nineteenth-century American drama critic and essayist William Cox, till then (1947) forgotten and now, unfortunately in my opinion, forgotten again. This is by no means an exhaustive list. I mean these six scholars' names to represent four times that number who have enriched the literary history of the United States in part as a result of their study of our early periodicals. For the most part, too, their work was done without the assistance of indexes or bibliographies. Indeed, Nelson Adkins found that he had to begin such an index to permit him to pursue the work he set out to do. But today such is not the case. I had better say, by nextyear suchwill not be the case, for those of us who work in American literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are about to be presented with a major work of reference entitled An Annotated Bibliography of American Literary Magazines 1741-1850. Prepared by Professor Jayne K. Kribbs of Temple University, and to be published next year by G. K. Hall of Boston, this long-needed study will name, describe, locate, and provide publication data on every important magazine published during this period of 110 years. More, it will index the names of all authors of pieces published in these magazines; and perhaps most important, it will index the titles of the more than 5,000 stories, tales, sketches, poems, essays, and plays printed in these magazines. With such a key to our early periodicals, the task of searching them will be relatively simple. Of course we must still look closely at every bit...