William Dean Howells (
March 1 1837 –
May 11 1920) was an
American realist author and literary critic. He was known for the Christmas story
Christmas Every Day.
Biography
Born in
Martins Ferry, Ohio, originally Martinsville, to William Cooper and Mary Dean Howells, Howells was the second of eight children. His father was a newspaper editor and printer, and moved frequently around
Ohio. Howells began to help his father with typesetting and printing work at an early age. During 1852, his father arranged to have one of Howells' poems published in the
Ohio State Journal without telling him.
During 1856, Howells was elected as a Clerk in the
State House of Representatives. During 1858, he began to work at the
Ohio State Journal where he wrote poetry, short stories, and also translated pieces from French, Spanish, and German. He avidly studied German and other languages and was greatly interested in
Heinrich Heine. During 1860, he visited
Boston and met with American writers
James Thomas Fields,
James Russell Lowell,
Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Henry David Thoreau, and
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Said to be rewarded for a biography of
Abraham Lincoln used during the
election of 1860, he gained a consulship in
Venice. On Christmas Eve 1862, he married Elinor Mead at the American embassy in
Paris. Among their children was the future architect
John Mead Howells. Upon returning to the U.S., Howells wrote for various magazines, including
Atlantic Monthly and
Harper's Magazine. From 1866, he became an assistant editor for the
Atlantic Monthly and was made editor in 1871, remaining in the position until 1881. During 1869, he first met
Mark Twain, which began a longtime friendship. Even more important for the development of his literary style-- his advocacy of
Realism-- was his relationship with the journalist
Jonathan Baxter Harrison, who during the 1870s wrote a series of articles for the
Atlantic Monthly on the lives of ordinary Americans (Fryckstedt 1958).
He wrote his first novel,
Their Wedding Journey, in 1872, but his literary reputation took off with the realist novel
A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which described the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel
The Rise of Silas Lapham is perhaps his best known, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur of the paint business. His social views were also strongly reoresented in the novels
Annie Kilburn (1888) and
A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890). He was particularly outraged by the trials resulting from the
Haymarket Riot.
His poems were collected during 1873 and 1886, and a volume under the title
Stops of Various Quills were published during 1895. He was the initiator of the school of American realists who derived through the Russians from
Balzac and had little sympathy with any other type of fiction, although he encouraged new writers in whom he discovered new ideas.
During 1904, he was one of the first seven people chosen for membership in the
American Academy of Arts and Letters, of which he became president.
thumb|Grave of William Dean HowellsHowells died May 11, 1920. He was buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts.
During 1928, eight years after Howells' death, his daughter published his correspondence as a biography of his literary years.
Literary theory
Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as
Henrik Ibsen,
Émile Zola,
Giovanni Verga,
Benito Pérez Galdós, and, especially,
Leo Tolstoy, which helped establish their reputations in the United States. He also wrote critically in support of American writers
Hamlin Garland,
Stephen Crane,
Emily Dickinson,
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman,
Paul Laurence Dunbar,
Sarah Orne Jewett,
Charles W. Chesnutt,
Abraham Cahan, and
Frank Norris. It is perhaps in this role that he had his greatest influence. In his "Editor's Study" column at the
Atlantic Monthly and, later, at
Harper's, he formulated and disseminated his theories of "realism" in literature.
In defense of the real, as opposed to the ideal, Howells is quoted as saying,
"I hope the time is coming when not only the artist, but the
common, average man, who always 'has the standard of the arts in his
power,' will have also the courage to apply it, and will reject the ideal
grasshopper wherever he finds it, in science, in literature, in art,
because it is not 'simple, natural, and honest,' because it is not like a
real grasshopper. But I will own that I think the time is yet far off,
and that the people who have been brought up on the ideal grasshopper,
the heroic grasshopper, the impassioned grasshopper, the self-devoted,
adventureful, good old romantic card-board grasshopper, must die out
before the simple, honest, and natural grasshopper can have a fair field."
Additional works
- A Counterfeit Presentment (1877)
- The Lady of the Aroostook (1879)
The following were written during his residence in
England and in
Italy, as was
The Rise of Silas Lapham in 1885.
- The Undiscovered Country (1880)
- A Fearful Responsibility (1881)
- Dr. Breen's Practice (1881)
He returned to the
United States in 1886. He wrote various types of works, including
fictional,
poetry, and
farces, of which
The Sleeping-Car, The Mouse-Trap, The Elevator,
Christmas Every Day, and
Out of the Question are characteristic.
- The Minister's Charge (1886)
- Modern Italian Poets (1887)
- Criticism and Fiction (1891)
- Christmas Every Day (1892)
- The World of Chance (1893)
- The Coast of Bohemia (1893)
- My Year In a Log Cabin (1893)
- The Story of a Play (1898)
- Their Silver Wedding Anniversary (1899)
- The Flight of Pony Baker (1902)
- Questionable Shapes (1903)
- Son of Royal Langbrith (1904)
- Certain Delightful English Towns (1906)
- Between the Dark and the Daylight (1907)
- Heroines of Fiction (1908)
- The Landlord At Lion's Head (1908)
- The Leatherwood God (1916)
- Years of My Youth (autobiography) (1916)
