San Antonio College Library

William Dean Howells constitutes a curious case in American literature, and that literature, like any national literature if closely examined, has a good many curious cases. Howells's curious place is that of an author whose presence loomed very large during most of his lifetime and who was quickly forgotten after his death. Every literature has its popular successes whose names are forgotten within a generation or less. Yet, there are differences...

In this study of the 19th-century American novel, the author demonstrates the imaginative continuity between sentimental and realistic fiction and sets out to establish that realism is the central and preeminent literary type in America, a mode grounded in the tradition of women's popular fiction which shaped the nation's reading habits in the mid-19th century. He examines this feminine literature, with its common technique of symbolizing deeper social...