EGGLESTON, EDWARD (1837-1902), American writer, was born in Vevay (Ind.), Dec. Io, 1837, of Virginia and Ken tucky stock. Because of his father's early death and his mother's re-marriage the family moved to New Albany and to Madison, and he himself spent some time with relatives in Virginia and southern Indiana, living through the "sharp contrasts of corn shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed by wild revivals" which he later described. Before he was nineteen, he had chosen as his own the heroic frontier profession of circuit rider, but within six months the toils and hardships involved broke down his health. After a stay in the Minnesota pine woods to recu perate, he held pastorates in St. Paul and elsewhere in the Minne sota Methodist Conference for several years, and in later life (1874-79) was minister of the Church of Christian Endeavour in Brooklyn. The remainder of his time was spent in literary work as associate editor of the Little Corporal (1866-67), a juvenile paper, and editor of the National Sunday School Teacher (1867 7o), in Chicago; for a short period as literary editor and later editor-in-chief of the Independent and editor of Hearth and Home in New York; and during the latter part of his life in retirement at his home on Lake George (N. Y.) . He died Sept. 4, 1902.
In all of his work he was true to his early ideal—to write with "photographic exactness" of the real West. The earliest of his books for adults, The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871), is also the best known, a vivid study of the backwoods Hoosiers, which was translated into French, German, Dutch and Danish. The End of the World (1872) has as its theme the expectation of the end of the world about the middle of the 19th century ; The Mystery of Metropolisville (1873) portrays a typical Minnesota boom town; The Circuit Rider (1874), less a novel than a series of sketches, contributes to our knowledge of frontier religious phenomena; Roxy (1878) illuminates politics on the border; The Graysons (1888), a good novel, shows Abraham Lincoln as a young lawyer in Illinois. The Faith Doctor 0890, Duffels (1893) and the children's books are of less significance.
Since Eggleston constantly stressed the fact that "no man is worthy to be called a novelist who does not endeavour with his whole soul to produce the higher form of history, by writing truly of men as they are, and dispassionately of those forms of life that come within his scope," it was but natural that he should turn near the end of his life to the writing of pure history. Although he produced several popular compendiums for school and home, he lived to complete only two volumes of his projected History of Life in the United States—The Beginners of a Nation (1896) and The Transit of Civilization (Igoo). As a pioneer in the field of social history, he deserves credit. Some of his novels have faults of exaggeration and structure, but as a first-hand picture of a phase of life that has long since passed away and as an antidote to the thrilling concoctions of the dime novelist they will long be important.
See Meredith Nicholson, The Hoosiers (igoo) and his article in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. xc.; G. C. Eggleston, The First of the Hoosiers (1903) ; also an autobiographical article in the Forum (Nov. 189o).
(Solanum Melongena), a perennial plant of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), closely allied to the potato, and known also as egg-fruit, aubergine and guinea-squash. It is prob ably a native of southern Asia, where since remote antiquity it has been cultivated for its fleshy fruit used as a vegetable. For this purpose it is usually grown as an annual. It has an erect, bushy, rather scurfy stem, sometimes armed with a few spines, and large ovate, slightly lobed leaves, and nodding, violet, usually solitary flowers, about 2 in. across. The fruit is a large, pendent, egg shaped, oblong or somewhat pear-shaped berry, varying in length from 2 in. to 12 in., dark purple, white or yellowish in colour, sometimes striped, and with a shining surface. The snake egg plant is a curious variety (var. serpentinum) with very narrow, elongated fruit, sometimes a foot long and curled at the end. The dwarf egg-plant (var. depressum) is a small, nearly smooth and spineless form, with nearly entire leaves and purple fruit about 4 in. long. In the southern United States egg-plant is extensively grown in kitchen gardens for home consumption and also as a market crop. U.S. production in 1927-36 averaged 7i4,000 bu. annually; in 1938 it was about 961,00o bushels. (See AUBERGINE.)