William Dean Howells – författare

The publication in 1882 of this classic book by “The Dean of American Letters” marked his transition from magazine editor and author of some mildly received comedies of manners, to leading American novelist and champion of realism in American literature. The story of Bartley Hubbard, a philandering, dishonest Boston journalist, and Marcia Gaylord, the wife who divorces him, is the first serious treatment of divorce in American literature. Although Howells had considered writing the novel for years, the actual composition of it brought forth another theme besides that of divorce—that of new journalism. Yet these two innovative and powerful themes are no more than vehicles for Howells’s real achievement—the perceptive delineation of contemporary American character, conditions in American culture, and the acute dislocations in ethical sensibility that fray the social fabric.  Bartley was still free as air; but if he could once make up his mind to settle down in a hole like Equity he could have her by turning his hand.

William Dean Howells' richly humorous characterization of a self-made millionaire in Boston society provides a paradigm of American culture in the Gilded Age. After establishing a fortune in the paint business, Silas Lapham moves his family from their Vermont farm to the city of Boston, where they awkwardly attempt to break into Brahmin society. Silas, greedy for wealth as well as prestige, brings his company to the brink of bankruptcy, and the family is forced to return to Vermont, financially ruined but morally renewed. As Kermit Vanderbilt points out in his introduction, the novel focuses on important themes in the American literary tradition: the efficacy of self-help and determination, the ambiguous benefits of social and economic progress, and the continual contradiction between urban and pastoral values.

Set against a vividly depicted background of fin de siécle New York, this novel centers on the conflict between a self-made millionaire and a fervent social revolutionary-a conflict in which a man of goodwill futilely attempts to act as a mediator, only to be forced himself into a crisis of conscience. Here we see William Dean Howells's grasp of the realities of the American experience in an age of emerging social struggle. His absolute determination to fairly represent every point of view is evident throughout this multifaceted work. Both a memorable portrait of an era and a profoundly moving study of human relationships, A Hazard of New Fortunes fully justifies Alfred Kazin's ranking of Howells as "the first great domestic novelist of American life."For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Including several images in various media to help paint a fuller picture of Howells's time and place. A rich selection of correspondence to and from Howells, some material from his notebooks, and a section detailing his changes to two specific controversial passages from the novel, give a sense of the writer at work.

The story of early Ohio from the days of the Mound Builders to the Victorian Age. This is a story of the people who lived in what is now the Great State of Ohio during those times. A story of the Native Americans who were there before the coming of the white settlers and a story of the savage raids and battles fought in the struggle to gain or retain control of this rich, vast territory. A story of the men and women who participated in these events along with the suffering and hardships faced by all in a struggle to keep their home or in their quest to find a better life for themselves and their descendents.

These two nouvelles mark Howells' plunge into psychological realism. Their themes-a triangle of tragic agonies with psychological insights intriguingly proto-Freudian, and a drama of miscegenation-are anything but the "smiling", lightweight topics to which Howells has been supposed to have been confined. The maturity both of their art and of their moral insight lends them an impact much deeper and more permanent than that of the shriller, more merely commercial shocking fiction of our day. Edwin H. Cady's introduction places the books in the context of the development of Howells' life, work, art, thought, and sensibility. He helps the reader make immediate contact with the artistic methods and intentions of the author.

For more than forty years William Dean Howells counted Mark Twain among his closest friends. Howells knew all the great men of American literature during the last half of the nineteenth century. In his acquaintance were Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, and a long list of other sages, poets, novelists, and critics.""They were like on another and like other literary men,"" Howells wrote, ""but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.""Mark Twin's death on April 21, 1910, moved Howells to record his memories of the man he felt ""pervaded"" the era ""almost more than any other man of letters."" His reminiscences were published in Harper's Monthly and subsequently put into book form along with twelve pieces of Howells' criticism of Mark Twain's work.This is the first new edition of the book since the original printing in 1910. Both the sketch and the essays have been annotated to give the reader a full appreciation of Mark Twain's growth as a writer and Howells' increasing awareness of his friends' greatness. The notes identify and explain the literary issues, the people, places, and events to which Howells alludes.The long friendship between Howells and Mark Twain fostered innumerable visits, extensive correspondence, joint literary projects, and often humorous escapades. To a great degree Howells identified with Clemens. Both men were of midwestern origin and came from similar backgrounds. They encountered literary Boston together. Both experienced domestic tragedy. The immediacy of My Mark Twain affords the reader a rare and intimate picture of Mark Twain and indirectly, of Howells.

William Dean Howells has long been recognized as the chief spokesman for post-1880s American Realism. Most of his writing appeared in popular magazines, however, and has been lost to us. This collection brings together for the first time his most significant essays about American drama written between 1875 and 1919 and a full bibliography of his writings on drama and theatre. The essays have been generously annotated and provide production and publication information on the plays Howells reviewed and biographical notes on the playwrights and actors whose work he described.Howells's commentary, the most literate treatment of American theatre of the time, defines and defends his theory of the evolutionary development of realism in modern drama. Because he reviewed more than on hundred fifty productions, which represent the full range of theatre that was available to him, his insights are based on invaluable first-hand knowledge of both self-consciously literary drama and the popular forms of performance that were central to America's entertainment before World War I. Howells's essays had a powerful influence on the serious playwrights and theatre practitioners who came of age at the turn of the century, and whose work in turn enabled playwrights like Eugene O'Neill and Susan Glaspell to develop a new realism during the teens.The essays in this volume are the core of Howells's theory of dramatic realism and will be interesting to scholars, students, and teachers of theatre history and literary criticism.

One of the most fascinating experiments in American literature resulted in The Whole Family. This unusual composite novel numbers among its twelve authors such luminaries as Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.The idea for this collaborative venture originated with Howells in 1906. Under the guidance of Elizabeth Jordan, the energetic editor of Harper’s Bazar (as it was then known), each of the authors was invited to write a successive chapter in a story Howells envisioned as a definitive depiction of American family life. But the original plan underwent a dramatic reversal with a controversial chapter by Freeman. From that point, The Whole Family became a more involved story of family misunderstandings and rivalries that actually mirrored the rivalries of the contributors themselves. Alfred Bendixen’s lively introduction offers the first accurate and complete account of the creation of this remarkable novel-uncovering new facts and revealing the turmoil out of which it was shaped. June Howard’s foreword provides an additional contextual and critical perspective.The Whole Family will be enjoyed by admirers of American literature at the start of the twenty-first century as much as it was by those at the beginning of the twentieth. In addition to delightful plot twists and characters, it offers a remarkable view into the ways in which family life has-and has not-changed over the course of a century.Full list of authors. Mary R. Shipman Andrews, John Kendrick Bangs, Alice Brown, Mary Stewart Cutting, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Elizabeth Jordan, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Henry van Dyke, Mary Heaton Vorse, Edith Wyatt