forced to choose between her cultural loyalty or the love of her life. The plot of the novel closely resembles that of Romeo and Juliet. The book was successful with critics, some comparing it to Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona. Atherton was not pleased with this comparison because Jackson was not from California. However, she was satisfied when Bierce said of The Doomswoman that it was "in its class... superior to any that any Californian has done". In 1892, Atherton left for New York. There she wrote for the New York World. She also wrote letters to Bierce, confiding her loneliness, her dismay at the necessity to do freelance writing (in particular for the New York World), and her dislike of eastern literary circles. Her distaste came from their belittlement of the West and its authors and the fact they did not accept Bierce's work. While in New York, she published another California novel, Before the Gringo Came (1894). She next wrote Patience Sparhawk and Her Times, A Novel (1897), but it proved to be too controversial. Its rejection encouraged her to leave for London. It was 1898 and John Lane of The Bodley Head agreed to publish it, but not for two years. She continued to write, writing book reviews for Oliver Fry's Vanity Fair, and even completed a book-length version of "The Randolphs of Redwood" (retitled A Daughter of the Vine, 1899) while staying in Haworth. Max Pemberton asked her to write a 10,000 word essay for a series he was editing for Cassells Pocket Library, which she wrote as A Whirl Asunder (1895). Once Patience Sparhawk and Her Times, A Novel was published, William Robertson Nicoll gave a review of it in the April 12, 1897 edition of The Bookman that said it was "crude" in its portrayal of a clever young woman with burning interest in life and identified it as a protest against the tame American novel. In the May 15 issue of The New York Times, the reviewer said that Atherton had "incontestable" ability and a "very original talent" while noting that the book offered a series of "fleshy" episodes in Patience's life that must have scared a sensitive reader. It was banned from the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute, and the San Francisco Call review said it represented Atherton's departure from her proper literary goal of treating early California themes romantically In 1898, she completed