If your local library has anything by
John Neal, it's likely locked up in special collections. And yet his bibliography contains influential criticisms and creative works like the first use of son-of-a-bitch in American fiction, the first uses of natural diction in Anglophile literature, the first works of American art criticism, the constitution of the first public gym established by an American, the first hardcover novel about the Salem witch trials, the first work by an American in British literary journals, and so many more groundbreaking, before-their-time works. To document Neal's career as a poet, critic, novelist, children's author, short story writer, journalist, playwright, historian, and translator, I put together this bibliography. This is my first FLC, though I did go through FAC recently twice for another article, so I'm going into this nomination fairly confident. I'm particularly interested in hearing from reviewers on my decision to
WP:SPLITOUT the section on
articles in periodicals. Thank you in advance for taking a look!
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 16:22, 24 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Initial comments
Against "Keep Cool, A Novel", what does "M.D.C." mean?
Reasonable question! I added a note there to answer that.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 19:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
"The best poetic description of Niagara Falls up to that time" - according to whom? There's a number of other direct quotes which would benefit from clarification of who actually said them.
The cited book says "With 'The Battle of Niagara' he became known for writing the greatest poetic description of Niagara Falls to that time." So the cited author is not referring to any one person's pronouncement. I reworded this claim in the article to hopefully better reflect the source.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 19:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
"A Portland, Maine guidebook "so chaotic in arrangement as to diminish greatly its usefulness."" - not a complete sentence so shouldn't have a full stop
That's what I got as far as the end of the Collaborative works section. I will look at the rest later..... --
ChrisTheDude (
talk) 07:15, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Further comments
I'd merge the second and third paragraphs under Selected articles, as both are very small
"Along with "Robert Steele," one of two stories" - same again - in fact, check throughout for this as it occurs in quite a lot of places
Done. As you can see, this is the part of the Wikipedia MOS that comes least naturally to me. Thank you for finding these. I just searched for the rest and I think I have now moved all the punctuation marks within quotes that aren't part of the quotes themselves.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 19:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Notes for "The Ins and the Outs, or the Last of the Bamboozled. By a Disappointed Man" randomly end in a semi-colon
That's it from me, I think - great work! --
ChrisTheDude (
talk) 18:19, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to read through it all and bringing up all these issues. Let me know if you think any of these items still need to be addressed.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 19:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
@
ChrisTheDude: do you support the nomination now that the issues you raised have been addressed, do you have more issues to raise, or would you like to leave your comments as just comments?
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 13:00, 30 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Support - apologies, I completely forgot to check back in............. --
ChrisTheDude (
talk) 07:37, 7 July 2021 (UTC)reply
Source review – Pass
Will do soon.
Aza24 (
talk) 01:06, 23 June 2021 (UTC)reply
Sorry for the delay, comments below:
Formatting
I'm not sure what "serial biography" means—perhaps link to
Serial (literature)? (if that's the correct link)
That article describes well this use of "serial", so I just Wikilinked it.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 21:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)reply
recommend adding location for Harvard University, like the other refs
Agreed! Done. I also Wikilinked Harvard.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 21:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)reply
Reliability
No issues here
Verifiability
no issues
Well not really anything to say over all—apologies for the delay. I've left two comments but they're to minor to prevent a source review pass, though I still recommend you address them. Best -
Aza24 (
talk) 23:40, 26 June 2021 (UTC)reply
I believe those comments are now addressed. Thank you for taking the time to do a source review!
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 21:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)reply
Comments from HAL
The lead is too short.
Agreed. I just expanded it by about 100%.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:22, 7 August 2021 (UTC)reply
I find the partial inclusion of articles strange. Either all articles should be included or it should be a "See also" link.
My thinking here is that I am following the
WP:SPLITOUT policy and the precedent of "Selected works" sections you see in authors' biography articles. The split-out
Articles by John Neal is 160,143 bytes, compared to this article's 113,603, so putting the full list of articles back in would more than double this article's size. I see value in having a shortened list of the more important stuff here, plus the full list in another article. Thoughts?
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:22, 7 August 2021 (UTC)reply
Up to you in the end. ~
HAL333 23:11, 20 August 2021 (UTC)reply
Ok. I'm going to keep as-is unless I find a policy to the contrary that convincingly applies here.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
More comments later. ~
HAL333 20:31, 3 August 2021 (UTC)reply
Thank you for taking the time to review and write up a few comments! I look forward to more.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:22, 7 August 2021 (UTC)reply
I am assuming that everything in the lead is sourced later in the list, right?
True. In fact, I think everything in the lead is copied from the prose introductions to the sections.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
As a novelist, John Neal I would link "
John Neal" since this is the first usage outside the lead.
To improve flow, you could combine the sentences A pioneer of American colloquialism and dialects in novels, Neal's novels are aligned with both the literary nationalist and regionalist movements. They also anticipate the characteristics of the American Renaissance
Maybe center the years in the columns. They are ever so slightly offset to the left.
That might be what it looks like in the 1st section, but in the subsequent sections I think it would look weird to center those columns and I want to be consistent in column alignment between sections.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
Are none of the novels notable enought to be redlinked?
That's a good question. What I just did was redlink the one work that is also redlinked from
John Neal (writer).
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
References need to be centered.
I can't figure out how to center the text in just one column without centering it in all columns. Can you help?
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
@
Dugan Murphy – You can do the easily by replacing | {{sfn|Richards|1933|p=1882}} with | style="text-align: center;" | {{sfn|Richards|1933|p=1882}}. I have
done one for you as an example. Repeat same in all the reference cells. –
Kavyansh.Singh (
talk) 09:01, 12 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Largely happy with this but with a few small comments:
His last major work was a guide book was an 1874 guidebook for his hometown, Portland, Maine—I know city-comma-state is the standard construction but leading into that with another comma is awkward here; suggest his hometown of Portland, Maine or something similar to avoid this.
Done! I also cut the extra words in that sentence to make it legible.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 23:35, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
No issue with red-linking something notable but not yet created but it's odd to see only one novel in that section being linked like this; is there anything about
Rachel Dyer: a North American Story that would set it apart from Neal's other novels in this regard? Less a matter of whether linking is right or wrong than it is one of consistency, really.
I hear what you're saying. Hal 333 asked in one of his comments (above) if anything was worth redlinking. I decided to redlink just Rachel Dyer because it is the only work of Neal's redlinked from
John Neal (writer). The only reason it is redlinked there is because it is generally regarded as Neal's best novel (see the notes column for that novel's entry in the bibliography). But sometimes I feel like if I'm not going to redlink all of them then I should redlink none of them, as was originally the case. Especially because they're all basically unknown to a modern audience. Do you have more thoughts on it?
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 23:35, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
The "Newspapers for which Neal wrote" section has no real context; I understand this may be due to necessity but do the sources you use for it mention the general or most common nature of these contributions—ie are they also serialising his fiction, or was he a columnist, etc? If the information isn't available that's fine but if it could be added briefly it would be nice.
Good point. I just added a short paragraph that hopefully adds sufficient context.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 23:35, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Happy to support this at present but would welcome the above being at least responded to if not actioned. Good work.
𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇꭗ 13:08, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Thank you for reviewing the list!
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 23:35, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Changes look good. What I would say about linking is that given the breadth of sourcing used here, it seems likely that a number of these novels would meet GNG if they haven't been created yet. Seventy-Six seems like a good contender, and you've several sources mentioning basically all of them bar the dime novels. It's worth considering; one link in a list makes more sense if it's to an extant article but one red link and no others does stand out. It's not an actionable objection to worry about though.
𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇꭗ 09:52, 23 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Closing note: This
candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see
WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the
bot goes through.
Giants2008 (
Talk) 22:06, 26 September 2021 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
If your local library has anything by
John Neal, it's likely locked up in special collections. And yet his bibliography contains influential criticisms and creative works like the first use of son-of-a-bitch in American fiction, the first uses of natural diction in Anglophile literature, the first works of American art criticism, the constitution of the first public gym established by an American, the first hardcover novel about the Salem witch trials, the first work by an American in British literary journals, and so many more groundbreaking, before-their-time works. To document Neal's career as a poet, critic, novelist, children's author, short story writer, journalist, playwright, historian, and translator, I put together this bibliography. This is my first FLC, though I did go through FAC recently twice for another article, so I'm going into this nomination fairly confident. I'm particularly interested in hearing from reviewers on my decision to
WP:SPLITOUT the section on
articles in periodicals. Thank you in advance for taking a look!
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 16:22, 24 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Initial comments
Against "Keep Cool, A Novel", what does "M.D.C." mean?
Reasonable question! I added a note there to answer that.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 19:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
"The best poetic description of Niagara Falls up to that time" - according to whom? There's a number of other direct quotes which would benefit from clarification of who actually said them.
The cited book says "With 'The Battle of Niagara' he became known for writing the greatest poetic description of Niagara Falls to that time." So the cited author is not referring to any one person's pronouncement. I reworded this claim in the article to hopefully better reflect the source.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 19:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
"A Portland, Maine guidebook "so chaotic in arrangement as to diminish greatly its usefulness."" - not a complete sentence so shouldn't have a full stop
That's what I got as far as the end of the Collaborative works section. I will look at the rest later..... --
ChrisTheDude (
talk) 07:15, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Further comments
I'd merge the second and third paragraphs under Selected articles, as both are very small
"Along with "Robert Steele," one of two stories" - same again - in fact, check throughout for this as it occurs in quite a lot of places
Done. As you can see, this is the part of the Wikipedia MOS that comes least naturally to me. Thank you for finding these. I just searched for the rest and I think I have now moved all the punctuation marks within quotes that aren't part of the quotes themselves.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 19:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Notes for "The Ins and the Outs, or the Last of the Bamboozled. By a Disappointed Man" randomly end in a semi-colon
That's it from me, I think - great work! --
ChrisTheDude (
talk) 18:19, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to read through it all and bringing up all these issues. Let me know if you think any of these items still need to be addressed.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 19:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)reply
@
ChrisTheDude: do you support the nomination now that the issues you raised have been addressed, do you have more issues to raise, or would you like to leave your comments as just comments?
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 13:00, 30 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Support - apologies, I completely forgot to check back in............. --
ChrisTheDude (
talk) 07:37, 7 July 2021 (UTC)reply
Source review – Pass
Will do soon.
Aza24 (
talk) 01:06, 23 June 2021 (UTC)reply
Sorry for the delay, comments below:
Formatting
I'm not sure what "serial biography" means—perhaps link to
Serial (literature)? (if that's the correct link)
That article describes well this use of "serial", so I just Wikilinked it.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 21:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)reply
recommend adding location for Harvard University, like the other refs
Agreed! Done. I also Wikilinked Harvard.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 21:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)reply
Reliability
No issues here
Verifiability
no issues
Well not really anything to say over all—apologies for the delay. I've left two comments but they're to minor to prevent a source review pass, though I still recommend you address them. Best -
Aza24 (
talk) 23:40, 26 June 2021 (UTC)reply
I believe those comments are now addressed. Thank you for taking the time to do a source review!
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 21:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)reply
Comments from HAL
The lead is too short.
Agreed. I just expanded it by about 100%.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:22, 7 August 2021 (UTC)reply
I find the partial inclusion of articles strange. Either all articles should be included or it should be a "See also" link.
My thinking here is that I am following the
WP:SPLITOUT policy and the precedent of "Selected works" sections you see in authors' biography articles. The split-out
Articles by John Neal is 160,143 bytes, compared to this article's 113,603, so putting the full list of articles back in would more than double this article's size. I see value in having a shortened list of the more important stuff here, plus the full list in another article. Thoughts?
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:22, 7 August 2021 (UTC)reply
Up to you in the end. ~
HAL333 23:11, 20 August 2021 (UTC)reply
Ok. I'm going to keep as-is unless I find a policy to the contrary that convincingly applies here.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
More comments later. ~
HAL333 20:31, 3 August 2021 (UTC)reply
Thank you for taking the time to review and write up a few comments! I look forward to more.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:22, 7 August 2021 (UTC)reply
I am assuming that everything in the lead is sourced later in the list, right?
True. In fact, I think everything in the lead is copied from the prose introductions to the sections.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
As a novelist, John Neal I would link "
John Neal" since this is the first usage outside the lead.
To improve flow, you could combine the sentences A pioneer of American colloquialism and dialects in novels, Neal's novels are aligned with both the literary nationalist and regionalist movements. They also anticipate the characteristics of the American Renaissance
Maybe center the years in the columns. They are ever so slightly offset to the left.
That might be what it looks like in the 1st section, but in the subsequent sections I think it would look weird to center those columns and I want to be consistent in column alignment between sections.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
Are none of the novels notable enought to be redlinked?
That's a good question. What I just did was redlink the one work that is also redlinked from
John Neal (writer).
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
References need to be centered.
I can't figure out how to center the text in just one column without centering it in all columns. Can you help?
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 00:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)reply
@
Dugan Murphy – You can do the easily by replacing | {{sfn|Richards|1933|p=1882}} with | style="text-align: center;" | {{sfn|Richards|1933|p=1882}}. I have
done one for you as an example. Repeat same in all the reference cells. –
Kavyansh.Singh (
talk) 09:01, 12 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Largely happy with this but with a few small comments:
His last major work was a guide book was an 1874 guidebook for his hometown, Portland, Maine—I know city-comma-state is the standard construction but leading into that with another comma is awkward here; suggest his hometown of Portland, Maine or something similar to avoid this.
Done! I also cut the extra words in that sentence to make it legible.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 23:35, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
No issue with red-linking something notable but not yet created but it's odd to see only one novel in that section being linked like this; is there anything about
Rachel Dyer: a North American Story that would set it apart from Neal's other novels in this regard? Less a matter of whether linking is right or wrong than it is one of consistency, really.
I hear what you're saying. Hal 333 asked in one of his comments (above) if anything was worth redlinking. I decided to redlink just Rachel Dyer because it is the only work of Neal's redlinked from
John Neal (writer). The only reason it is redlinked there is because it is generally regarded as Neal's best novel (see the notes column for that novel's entry in the bibliography). But sometimes I feel like if I'm not going to redlink all of them then I should redlink none of them, as was originally the case. Especially because they're all basically unknown to a modern audience. Do you have more thoughts on it?
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 23:35, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
The "Newspapers for which Neal wrote" section has no real context; I understand this may be due to necessity but do the sources you use for it mention the general or most common nature of these contributions—ie are they also serialising his fiction, or was he a columnist, etc? If the information isn't available that's fine but if it could be added briefly it would be nice.
Good point. I just added a short paragraph that hopefully adds sufficient context.
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 23:35, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Happy to support this at present but would welcome the above being at least responded to if not actioned. Good work.
𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇꭗ 13:08, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Thank you for reviewing the list!
Dugan Murphy (
talk) 23:35, 22 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Changes look good. What I would say about linking is that given the breadth of sourcing used here, it seems likely that a number of these novels would meet GNG if they haven't been created yet. Seventy-Six seems like a good contender, and you've several sources mentioning basically all of them bar the dime novels. It's worth considering; one link in a list makes more sense if it's to an extant article but one red link and no others does stand out. It's not an actionable objection to worry about though.
𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇꭗ 09:52, 23 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Closing note: This
candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see
WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the
bot goes through.
Giants2008 (
Talk) 22:06, 26 September 2021 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.