San Antonio College Library

This is the first comprehensive collection of correspondence between Mark Twain and his editor William D. Howells. The publishing practices and critical attitudes of the period are variously documented here as it showcases the Gilded Age in American writing.

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...

Exploring the consciousness and creative impulse of William Dean Howells, Professor Vanderbilt finds that Howells' personality reflected the mixed feelings of the American mind in an ambivalent and transitional society. By this interpretation he introduces a new and imaginative approach to the writer and his work, and Howells emerges as one of the major American literary figures of the late nineteenth century. The author's impressive research into...

A critical analysis of Howell's writings, in the context of the society in which he lived.