William Dean Howells

In addition to his own creative works, Howells also wrote 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, Madison Cawein, 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.

Howells viewed realism as "nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material."[18]

In defense of the real, as opposed to the ideal, he wrote,

"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."[19]

Howells believed the future of American writing was not in poetry but in novels, a form which he saw shifting from "romance" to a serious form.[20]

Howells was a Christian socialist whose ideals were greatly influenced by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.[21] He joined a Christian socialist group in Boston between 1889 and 1891[22] and attended several churches, including the First Spiritual Temple and the Church of the Carpenter, the latter being affiliated with the Episcopal Church and the Society of Christian Socialists.[23] These influences led him to write on issues of social justice from a moral and egalitarian point of view, being critic of the social effects of industrial capitalism.[24][25][26] He was, however, not a Marxist.[27]

Noting the "documentary" and truthful value of Howells' work, Henry James wrote: "Stroke by stroke and book by book your work was to become, for this exquisite notation of our whole democratic light and shade and give and take, in the highest degree documentary."[28] The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing read two of Howell's works, The Shadow of a Dream and A Fearful Responsibility, calling the latter "inane triviality". [29] Bliss Perry considered a knowledge of his work vital for an understanding of the American provincial novel and believed that "he has never in his long career written an insincere, a slovenly, or an infelicitous page."[30]

• 
  William Dean Howells, c. 1870.
• 
  Howells, by Van der Weyde, 1906.
• 
  William Dean Howells in 1866.
• 
  Howells in 1887.
• 
  Grave of William Dean Howells, in Cambridge Cemetery.

• Lives and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin (New York, W. A. Townsend & Co.; Columbus, Follett, Foster & co., 1860).
• Venetian Life (London: N. Trübner & Co., 1866; later American edition with additional cancels: New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866).
• Italian Journeys (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867).
• "No Love Lost," Putnam's Magazine, Vol. 2 (new series), No. 12, pp. 641–51 (December 1868). Reprinted as No Love Lost. A Romance of Travel (New York: G.P. Putnam & Son, 1869).
• Suburban Sketches (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1871).[31]
• Their Wedding Journey (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1872).
• A Chance Acquaintance (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1874).
• Sketch of the Life and Character of Rutherford B. Hayes (New York & Boston: Hurd and Houghton, [1876]).
• A Foregone Conclusion (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1875).
• A Day's Pleasure (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1876).
• The Parlor Car: A Farce (Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1876) (originally published in the ASeptember 1876 issue of Atlantic Monthly).
• A Counterfeit Presentment: A Comedy (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1877).
• Out of the Question (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1877).
• The Lady of The Aroostook (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 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 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1880).
• A Modern Instance: A Novel (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1881).
• A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1881) (in addition to the title story: "At the Sign of the Savage" and "Tonelli's Marriage").
• Dr. Breen's Practice: A Novel (Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1881).
• A Day's Pleasure, and Other Sketches (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1881) (in addition to title story: "Buying a Horse," "Flitting," "The Mouse" and "A Year in a Venetian Palace").
• Out of the Question; and, At the Sign of the Savage (Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1882) (The first story was first published in the February–April 1877 issue of Atlantic Monthly).
• A Woman's Reason: A Novel (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., [c1882] 1883).
• The Sleeping Car: A Farce (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1883).
• Niagara Revisited 12 Years after their Wedding Journey by the Hoosac Tunnel Route (Chicago: D. Dalziel, 1884) (Revision of piece from May 1883 issue of Atlantic Monthly).
• Three Villages (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1884).
• The Register: A Farce (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1884).
• Tuscan Cities (Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1884).
• The Rise of Silas Lapham (Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1885).
• A Sea-Change, or, Love's Stowaway: A Comic Opera in Two Acts and an Epilogue (London: Trübner & Co.; Boston: A.P. Schmidt & Co., c1884).
• Poems (Boston: Ticknor, 1885).
• The Elevator: A Farce (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1885; 0James R. Osgood, c1886).

He returned to the United States in 1886. He wrote various types of works, including fiction, poetry, and farces, of which The Sleeping Car, The Mouse-Trap, The Elevator; Christmas Every Day; and Out of the Question are characteristic.

• Indian Summer (Boston: Ticknor & Co. 1885).
• The Garroters: A Farce (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886).
• The Minister's Charge: or The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1886).
• Modern Italian Poets: Essays and Versions (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1887).
• April Hopes: A Novel (Edinburgh: David Douglas 1887; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1888).
• with Thomas Sergeant Ferry (eds.), Library of Universal Adventure by Sea and Land including Original Narratives and Authentic Stories of Personal Prowess and Peril in All the Waters and Regions of the Globe from the Year 79 A.D. to the Year 1888 A.D. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1888).
• A Sea-Change: or, Love's Stowaway, a Lyricated Farce in Two Acts and an Epilogue (Boston: Ticknor & Company, 1888).
• with Mark Twain and Charles Hopkins Clark (comps.), Mark Twain's Library of Humor (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1888).
• The Mouse-Trap and Other Farces (New York: Harper, 1889) (in addition to the title farce:The Garotters, Five o'Clock Tea, and A Likely Story).
• Annie Kilburn: A Novel (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1889).
• A Hazard of New Fortunes: A Novel (New York: Harper & Brothers / (Harper's Franklin square library: new ser, no. 661. Extra, Nov. 1889)).
• The Shadow of a Dream: A Story (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890).
• A Boy's Town: described for "Harper's Young People" (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890).
• An Imperative Duty (Author's ed.: Edinburgh: D. Douglas / (David Douglas' series of American authors, 54) 1891).
• Criticism and Fiction (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891).
• The Quality of Mercy (New York; London: Harper, 1891).
• The Albany Depot (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1892 [i.e.1891]).
• A Little Swiss Sojourn (New York: Harper & Brothers / (Harper's black & white series), 1892).
• A Letter of Introduction: Farce (New York: Harper & Brothers / (Harper's black and white series), 1892).
• The World of Chance (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893).
• The Unexpected Guest (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893).
• My Year in a Log Cabin (New York: Harper & Brothers / (Harper's black and white series), 1893).
• Christmas Every Day and Other Stories Told to Children (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893).
• The Coast of Bohemia: A Novel (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893).
• Evening Dress: A Farce (New York: Harper & Brothers / (Harper's black and white series), 1893).
• A Traveler from Altruria: Romance (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1894).
• My Literary Passions (New York: Harper, 1895).
• Stops of Various Quills (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1895).
• A Parting and a Meeting: Story (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896).
• Impressions and Experiences (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896) (consisting of "The Country Printer," "Police Report," "I Talk of Dreams," "An East-Side Ramble," "Tribulations of a Cheerful Giver," "The Closing of the Hotel," "Glimpses of Central Park" and "New York Streets").
• Stories of Ohio (New York, Cincinnati: American Book Co., 1897).
• The Landlord At Lion's Head (Edinburg: David Douglas, 1897).
• An Open-Eyed Conspiracy: An Idyl of Saratoga (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1897).
• A Previous Engagement: Comedy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897).
• The Story of a Play: A Novel (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1898).
• Ragged Lady: A Novel (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1899).
• Their Silver Wedding Journey (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1899).
• An Indian Giver: A Comedy (Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1900).
• Bride Roses: A Scene (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1900 [c1893]).
• Literary Friends and Acquaintance: A Personal Retrospect of American Authorship (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1900).
• Doorstep Acquaintance, and Other Sketches (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1900) (in addition to title story: "Tonelli's Marriage," "A Romance of Real Life" and "At Padua").
• Room Forty-Five: A Farce (Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin, 1900).
• A Pair of Patient Lovers (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1901).
• Heroines of Fiction (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1901).
• The Kentons: A Novel (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1902).
• The Flight of Pony Baker: A Boy's Town Story (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1902).
• Literature and Life: Studies (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1902) (consisting of the following essays: "The Man of Letters as a Man of Business," "Worries of a Winter Walk," "Confessions of a Summer Colonist," "The Editor's Relations with the Young Contributor," "Summer Isles of Eden," "Wild Flowers of the Asphalt, "Last Days in a Dutch Hotel," "Some Anomalies of the Short Story," "A Circus in the Suburbs," "A She Hamlet," "Spanish Prisoners of War," "The Midnight Platoon," "The Beach at Rockaway," "American Literary Centres," "Sawdust in the Arena," "At a Dime Museum," "American Literature in Exile," "The Horse Show," "The Problem of the Summer," "Esthetic New York Fhty-Odd Years Ago," "From New York into New England," "The Standard Household-Effect Company," "Staccato Notes of a Vanished Summer," "The Art of the Adsmith," "The Psychology of Plagiarism," "Puritanism in American Fiction," "The What and the How in Art," "Politics of American Authors," "Storage' and "'Floating Down the River on the O-hi-o'").
• Letters Home (New York, London, Harper & Brothers, 1903).
• Questionable Shapes (New York, London, Harper & Brothers, 1903) (consisting of "His Apparition," "The Angel of the Lord" and "Though One Rose from the Dead).
• The Son of Royal Langbrith: A Novel (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1904).
• Miss Bellard's Inspiration: A Novel (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1905).
• London Films (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1905).
• Braybridge's Offer in William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden (eds.), Quaint Courtships: Harper's Novelettes (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, [1906]).
• The Amigo in William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden (eds.), The Heart of Childhood: Harper's Novelettes (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1906).
• Editha in William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden (eds.), Different Girls: Harper's Novelettes (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1906).
• The Mulberries in Pay's Garden (Cincinnati: Western Literary Press, 1906).
• Certain Delightful English Towns with Glimpses of the Pleasant Country Between (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1906).
• Between the Dark and the Daylight: Romances (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1907) (consisting of: "A Sleep and a Forgetting," "The Eidolons of Brooks Alford," "A Memory that Worked Overtime," "A Case of Metaphantasmia," "Editha," "Braybridge’s Offer" and "The Chick of the Easter Egg").
• Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1907).
• Roman Holiday and Others (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1908) (in addition to the title piece: ""Up and Down Medeira," "The Up-Town Blocks into Spain," "Ashore at Genoa," "Naples and Her Joyful Noise," "Pompeii Revisited," "A Week at Leghorn," "Over at Pisa," "Back at Genoa" and "Eden After the Fall").
• The Whole Family: A Novel (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1908).
• Fennel and Rue: A Novel (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1908).
• Seven English Cities (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1909).
• The Mother and Father: Dramatic Passages (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1909).
• My Mark Twain: Reminiscences and Criticisms (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1910).
• Imaginary Interviews (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1910) (consisting of the following essays: "The Restoration of the Easy Chair by Way of Introduction, "A Year of Spring and a Life of Youth," "Sclerosis of the Tastes," "The Practices and Precepts of Vaudeville," "Intimations of Italian Opera," "The Superiority of Our Inferiors," "Unimportance of Women in Republics," "Having Just Got Home," "New York to the Home-Comer's Eye," "Cheapness of the Costliest City on Earth," "Ways and Means of Living in New York," "The Quality of Boston and the Quantity of New York," "The Whirl of Life in Our First Circles," "The Magazine Muse," "Comparative Luxuries of Travel," "Qualities without Defects," "A Wasted Opportunity," "A Niece's Literary Advice to Her Uncle," "A Search for Celebrity," "Practical Immortality on Earth," "Around a Rainy-Day Fire," "The Advantages of Quotational Criticism," "Reading for a Grandfather," "Some Moments with the Muse," "A Normal Hero and Heroine Out of Work," "Autumn in the Country and City," "Personal and Epistolary Addresses," "Dressing for Hotel Dinner," "The Counsel of Literary Age to Literary Youth," "The Unsatisfactoriness of Unfriendly Criticism," "The Fickleness of Age," "The Renewal of Inspiration," "The Summer Sojourn of Florindo and Lindora," "To Have the Honor of Meeting" and "A Day at Bronx Park").
• "A Counsel of Consolation" in In After Days: Thoughts on the Future Life (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1910).
• Parting Friends: A Farce (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1911).
• New Leaf Mills: A Chronicle (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1913).
• Familiar Spanish Travels (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1913).
• Seen and Unseen at Stratford-upon-Avon: A Fantasy (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1914).
• The Leatherwood God (New York: The Century Co., 1916).
• The Daughter of the Storage, and Other Things in Prose and Verse (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1916) (in addition to the title story: "A Presentiment," "Captain Dunlevy's Last Trip," "The Return to FavorSomebody's Mother," "The Face at the Window," "An Experience," "The Boarders," "Breakfast Is My Best Meal," "The Mother-Bird," "The Amigo," "Black Cross Farm," "The Critical Bookstore," "A Feast of Reason," "City and Country in the Fall," "Table Talk," "The Escapade of a Grandfather," "Self-sacrifice: A Farce-tragedy" and "The Night before Christmas").
• Years of My Youth (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1916).
• "Eighty Years and After," Harper's Monthly Magazine, Vol. CXL, No. DCCXXXV (December 1919), pp. 21–28.
• The Vacation of the Kelwyns: An Idyl of the Middle Eighteen-Seventies (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1920).
• Hither and Thither in Germany (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1920).
• Mrs. Farrell: A Farce (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1921) (first printed as "Private Theatricals [Part I]," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XXXVI, No. CCXVII (November 1875), pp. 513–22 and "Private Theatricals [Part II]," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XXXVI, Nol. CCXVIII (December 1875), pp. 674–87).

• William Dean Howells House, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Redtop, his home in Belmont, Massachusetts
• American realism

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 154.
• Fryckstedt, Olov W. 1958. In Quest of America: A Study of Howells' Early Development as a Novelist. Uppsala, Sweden: Thesis.
• Goodman, Susan and Carl Dawson. William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. ISBN 0-520-23896-6
• Lynn, Kenneth S. William Dean Howells: An American Life. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970. ISBN 0-15-142177-3
• Olsen, Rodney. Dancing in Chains: The Youth of William Dean Howells. New York: New York University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8147-6172-0

• Peter J. Frederick, Knights of the Golden Rule: The Intellectual As Christian Social Reformer in the 1890s. Lexington, KY: University Press Of Kentucky, 1976.
• Ulrich Halfmann and William Dean Howells, "Interviews with William Dean Howells," American Literary Realism, 1870–1910, vol. 6, no. 4 (Fall 1973), pp. 274–275, 277–279, 281–399, 401–416. In JSTOR.
• Ulrich Halfmann and Don R. Smith, "William Dean Howells: A Revised and Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Comment in Periodicals and Newspapers, 1868–1919," American Literary Realism, 1870–1910, vol. 5, no. 2 (Spring 1972), pp. 91–121. In JSTOR.
• Radavich, David. "Twain, Howells, and the Origins of Midwestern Drama." MidAmerica XXXI (2004): 25–42.
• N. S. Witschi, Traces of Gold: California's Natural Resources and the Claim to Realism in Western American Literature. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2002.

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• Works by William Dean Howells at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Dean Howells at Internet Archive
• Works by William Dean Howells at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Essays by William Dean Howells at Quotidiana.org
• William Dean Howells Society includes a biographical sketch of Howells, links to his works (including the "Editor's Study" columns), questions and replies, bibliographies, and pictures.
• Realism in American Literature at the Literary Movements site
• Finding aid to the Clara and Rudolf Kirk collection of William Dean Howells material at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
• William Dean Howells at Library of Congress Authorities, with 391 catalog records
• Finding aid to William Dean Howells papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.