life, a true friend to writers. In his autobiographical novel, Kenneth Rexroth speaks of her kindness to him and his wife when they arrived in San Francisco in the late 1920s. Charlotte S. McClure in a Dictionary of Literary Biography essay said that Atherton "redefined women's potential and presented a psychological drama of a woman's quest for identity and for a life purpose and happiness within and beyond her procreative function". She also said that Patience Sparhawk was Atherton's "first significant novel".In an 1898 essay in Bookman, a critic stated:"the amazing and memorable Patience Sparhawk may perhaps be referred to as the first foreshadowing of the good work that [Atherton] has done since. It seems to have been also generally conceded that no matter what the subject chanced to be . . . nothing from her pen would be commonplace or dull. [But] that startling performance [in Patience Sparhawk] introduced her to a different audience, one much larger and more seriously interested than she had had before." Carl van Vechten said of Atherton in a Nation article: "Usually (not always, to be sure), the work of Mrs. Wharton seems to me to be scrupulous, clever and uninspiring, while that of Mrs. Atherton is often careless, sprawling, but inspired. Mrs. Wharton, with some difficulty, it would appear, has learned to write; Mrs. Atherton was born with a facility for telling stories." In an essay for Bookman, Frederic Taber Cooper stated that in Senator North, the character Harriet "is practically a white woman but for a scarcely perceptible blueness at the base of her fingernails, this character of Harriet is perhaps the best bit of feminine analysis that Mrs. Atherton ever did." Political views Atherton was a suffragist who did not believe in the use of militancy to further the cause. In 1917 she wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times to express her support for suffrage while voicing her opposition to militancy. Atherton also advocated white supremacy. Atherton's novel Senator North describes a marriage between a "passing" woman of mixed white and African-American ancestry and a white man, which ends in tragedy. Senator North was intended by Atherton as a warning against Interracial marriages. In a 1922 The Bookman article, "The Alpine School of Fiction", Atherton praised the book The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant, describing it as a "remarkable work, with its warning