A Kentucky Cardinal

A Kentucky Cardinal is a short novel by James Lane Allen (1849-1925), first published in 1894. The book was one of the major commercial and critical successes of Allen’s career and helped establish him as the leading American writer of Kentucky-set fiction in the late nineteenth century.

The novel is narrated by Adam Moss, a quiet Kentucky bachelor whose passion is the observation of birds, particularly the Kentucky cardinal whose bright red plumage gives the book its title. Adam’s careful naturalist’s life is disrupted when new neighbors move next door and he finds himself slowly drawn into a romantic attachment with Georgiana Cobb. The novel works through the developing relationship with a quiet attention to natural detail and to the small movements of human feeling.

Allen wrote in the literary realism tradition that William Dean Howells had been championing in American letters across the previous two decades. The Kentucky setting drew on Allen’s own background in the Lexington area. The book and its sequel Aftermath of 1896 remained popular for several decades.