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William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells (1837 – 1920), considered “The Dean of American Letters,” was an American author and literary critic with a broad range of works appealing to young and old. His writing style favored naturalism, in which he related his characters’ observations in a seemingly casual and endearing manner by embracing their imperfections. Howells inspired many writers, particularly Sherwood Anderson.
Howells was well known during his time. His short story “Christmas Every Day” — which is featured in our collection of Christmas Stories — was widely read in his day and his novel The Rise of Silas Lapham is still read in high school and college classrooms as an exemplar of the genre of Realism. His short story The Pumpkin-Glory is featured in Children’s Stories.

Howells is also renowned for his turn as the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, where he was a steady champion of the Realist movement in literature. Not only leading by example in his own work, but also arguing for its greater adoption by other writers and artists. He saw realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.” Perhaps as a nod for the role of humor in realism, Howells collaborated with Mark Twain in writing Mark Twain’s Library of Humor (1888).
He was no fan of writing to high ideals that swapped life’s many imperfections for ideal replacements writing, “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.”

Books

  • Mrs. Farrell
  • My Year in a Log Cabin
  • The Rise of Silas Lapham
  • Poems

  • The Battle of Lookout Mountain
  • Short Stories

  • A Case Of Metaphantasmia
  • A Circle In The Water
  • A Day’s Pleasure
  • A Difficult Case
  • A Feast Of Reason
  • A Foolish Man, Philosopher, and Fanatic
  • A Memory That Worked Overtime
  • An Experience
  • A Pair Of Patient Lovers
  • A Pedestrian Tour
  • A Presentiment
  • A Romance Of Real Life
  • A Sleep And A Forgetting
  • At a Dime Museum
  • At The Sign Of The Savage
  • Braybridge’s Offer
  • Butterflyflutterby and Flutterbybutterfly
  • Buying A Horse
  • By Horse-Car To Boston
  • Christmas Every Day
  • City and Country in the Fall, A Long-distance Eclogue
  • Doorstep Acquaintance
  • Editha
  • Famous Ohio Soldiers
  • “Floating Down the River On the O-hi-o”
  • His Apparition
  • Incidents And Characteristics
  • Indian Fighters
  • Indian Heroes And Sages
  • Jubilee Days
  • Later Captivities
  • Life In The Backwoods
  • Mrs. Johnson
  • Ohio As A Part Of France
  • Ohio Becomes English
  • Ohio Statesmen
  • Other Notable Ohioans
  • Sawdust in the Arena
  • Scene
  • Somebody’s Mother
  • Some Lessons From The School Of Morals
  • Table Talk
  • The Amigo
  • The Angel Of The Lord
  • The Art of the Adsmith
  • The Boarders
  • The Captivity Of Boone And Kenton
  • The Captivity Of James Smith
  • The Chick Of The Easter Egg
  • The Civil War In Ohio
  • The Critical Bookstore
  • The Daughter Of The Storage
  • The Eidolons Of Brooks Alford
  • The Escapade Of A Grandfather
  • The Escape Of Knight And Slover
  • The Father
  • The Fight With Slavery
  • The First Great Settlements
  • The Forty Years’ War For The West
  • The History Of Ali Cogia, A Merchant Of Bagdad
  • The Ice Folk And The Earth Folk
  • The Indian Wars And St. Clair’s Defeat
  • The Indian Wars And Wayne’s Victory
  • The Magic Of A Voice
  • The Midnight Platoon
  • The Mother-Bird
  • The Night Before Christmas: A Morality
  • The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express
  • The Pumpkin-Glory
  • The Pursuit Of The Piano
  • The Renegades
  • The Return To Favor
  • The State Of Ohio In The War Of 1812
  • The Torture Of Colonel Crawford
  • The Wickedest Deed In Our History
  • Though One Rose From The Dead
  • Tonelli’s Marriage
  • Turkeys Turning The Tables
  • Ways Out
  • Essays

  • I Talk of Dreams
  • War Stops Literature