William Dean Howells
Author of the beloved novel The Rise of Silas Lapham, William Dean Howells is known as one of the foremost practitioners of the literary style known as realism. In Their Silver Wedding Journey, Howells provides a coda to his earlier novel, Their Wedding Journey, filling readers in on how the ensuing years have changed and shaped the couple at the center of both books, the Marches.
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.
The collaborative efforts of twelve different authors writing a chapter each, The Whole Family is a 1908 novel conceived of by writer William Dean Howells and directed by Elizabeth Jordan, the editor Harper's Bazaar at the time. Howells' wished to explore how an entire family might both affect and be affected by a marriage. The narrative became somewhat of a mirror for the at-times contentious relationships between its various authors. The
...Known as the "Dean of American Letters," author and editor William Dean Howells produced many novels and plays over the course of his august career. In the novel The Story of a Play, he ingeniously combines both genres, penning a tale about a romance between a woman and a journalist who dreams of becoming a famous playwright.
In this epic family saga that comprises three complete novels, readers can follow the lives of Isabel and Basil March from their honeymoon (Their Wedding Journey), through Basil's attempt to make a career change (A Hazard of New Fortunes), and finally through a trip the couple makes to Germany decades into their marriage (Their Silver Wedding Journey).
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the trend of forming utopian communities became prevalent across the United States. Several of William Dean Howells' novels gently satirized this movement; in Through the Eye of the Needle, an unlikely pair of utopian community dwellers fall in love.
In the late 1800s, novelist and poet William Dean Howells began to write a series of short comic plays he called farces, often dealing with episodes drawn from day-to-day life. In The Register, zany heroines Henrietta Spaulding and Ethel Reed spruce up their newly rented apartment.
In this short novel from the "Dean of American Letters," a young woman traveling with her aunt and uncle makes the acquaintance of an unusual gentleman from New England. Though at first she is puzzled and perhaps even repelled by his eccentric worldview and personality, she gradually begins to feel drawn toward him.
