William Dean Howells

This novel from popular nineteenth-century American author William Dean Howells features a visitor from a mysterious distant island known as Altruria. The contrast between the utopian island community and conditions in 1890s America provides remarkable insight into the social and cultural issues facing the country then -- and now. A must-read for fans of utopian fantasy and science fiction. As part of our mission to publish great works of literary...

One of the most influential authors of the late nineteenth century, and a former editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine, William Dean Howells wrote more than fifty novels, as well as plays, memoirs, and poetry collections. Opposed to the sentimentalism, contrived heroism, and theatrical endings in fiction, he developed a literary style based on unvarnished realism. This unique genre is brilliantly depicted in A Modern Instance, a novel...

This 1895 collection of verse, gorgeously illustrated by Howard Pyle, contains among other poems "The Bewildered Guest," "Midway," "From Generation to Generation," "The Burden," "Reward and Punishment," and "Friends and Foes." After losing his daughter a few years before, Howells proved with this collection that he was not an irrepressible optimist.

A fantastic collection of ten novelettes from the early 20th century.

"You have done nothing more true and complete," wrote Henry James about William Dean Howells's novel The Kentons. Here, Howells follows a Midwestern family as they travel first to New York and then to Holland-in order to take the daughter, Ellen, away from an abusive relationship. Along the way they explore the contrasts between their Ohio manners and those of the regions they visit, a familiar theme in Howells's work.

Howells recoge en Vida veneciana sus recuerdos de los dos años en que, en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, residió en Venecia como miembro del cuerpo diplomático estadounidense. En estas páginas, según Henry James, Howells se muestra como uno de los escritores norteamericanos con mayor encanto, gracias a su agudeza y a su vivacidad como observador, y como un viajero sentimental, que nos sirve de guía por los lugares menos conocidos pero más...

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American realist author and literary critic. He wrote his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in 1871, but his literary reputation really took off with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which describes 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 in the paint business. His social views...

Published in 1910, this book is a testament to the long friendship between Howells and Twain. "Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists," Howells writes, "they were like one another and like other literary men, but Clemens [Twain] was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature." The second half of the book collects Howells's perceptive reviews of Twain's works.

A naïve Massachusetts schoolteacher sails to Italy, where she is harassed by a drunk and meets a Boston socialite who will become her husband. The Lady of the Aroostook explores a favorite theme of Howells-conflicting social habits, in this case those of the American village and those of the American city.

The Sleeping-Car, a farce by William Dean Howells. The Sleeping Car is a farce play in three parts by William Dean Howells, first published in the United States in 1883. This play takes place entirely within a 24-hour period on a railway sleeping car, and revolves around a woman's late night confusion regarding the premature appearance of her husband and brother.