Yollop

George Barr McCutcheon (1866-1928) was an American popular novelist and playwright whose best-known works include his series of novels set in Graustark, a fictional Eastern European country, and the novel Brewster's Millions which has been adapted into a play and several films. He was born in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, and his father, despite his own lack of any formal education, stressed the value of literature and encouraged his sons to write. McCutcheon studied at Purdue University and during his college years was editor of the Lafayette Daily Courier and wrote a serial novel which was a satire on Wabash River life. Despite the fame he achieved from the success of his Graustark novels, the first of which appeared in 1901, McCutcheon disliked being characterized as a "romantic", and peferred to be identified as a playwright. McCutcheon's novels fall into the Golden Age of Indiana Literature, the period between 1880-1920 when many nationally and internationally acclaimed works were created by natives of the state of Indiana, among the foremost of whom were Booth Tarkington, Theodore Dreiser, Gene Stratton Porter, and Lew Wallace. In his 1922 novella, Yollop, McCutcheon returns to the legal system which had provided the backdrop for previous works, presenting a striking, humorous, and brilliant satire on crime waves, juries, prisons, and reformers.