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John McGovern's Daniel Trentworthy. A Tale of the Great Fire of Chicago, like Martha
Lamb's Spicy (1873) and E.P. Roe's Barriers Burned Away, is a convoluted romance to
which the fire provides a climax. Few authors could match McGovern's apocalyptic
descriptions of the great conflagration. A sample: "One may not be so bold as to imagine
the light in which Moses stood as God passed by on Sinai's top; one may, with the same
reverence, refuse to conceive the light of the epiphany which fell upon the beloved of men
outside the holy city. And no one who did not behold it can, in his mind, illustrate the arch
of nocturnal heaven as it was lit that night by the torch of the destroying angel. The
universe was white, so that no star could shine. The hurricane blew a fleecy vapor through
the sky, like a great auroral tumult, until one might see twenty miles into Lake Michigan.
Cocks crew more than thrice that night, and beasts arose, doubtless marveling more than
men--for men had not yet believed their own senses."
McGovern was born in 1850 and as a young man worked as a typesetter, proofreader, and
night editor at the Tribune. He was later the chief editorial writer of the Chicago Herald, as
well as author of poetry and other fiction besides Daniel Trentworthy. He also edited the
Illustrated World's Fair, which was devoted to the Columbian Exposition.
While the fiction of the fire is mainly a ninteenth-century phenomenon, in recent
years a few children's novels on the subject have appeared.
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Stage, Story, and Song 