William Dean Howells, the Realist as Humanist

William Dean Howells, the Realist as Humanist PDF Author: William Alexander
Publisher: Burt Franklin
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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William Dean Howells, the Realist as Humanist

William Dean Howells, the Realist as Humanist PDF Author: William Alexander
Publisher: Burt Franklin
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description


William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells PDF Author: Susan Goodman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 052093024X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
Possibly the most influential figure in the history of American letters, William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was, among other things, a leading novelist in the realist tradition, a formative influence on many of America's finest writers, and an outspoken opponent of social injustice. This biography, the first comprehensive work on Howells in fifty years, enters the consciousness of the man and his times, revealing a complicated and painfully honest figure who came of age in an era of political corruption, industrial greed, and American imperialism. Written with verve and originality in a highly absorbing style, it brings alive for a new generation a literary and cultural pioneer who played a key role in creating the American artistic ethos. William Dean Howells traces the writer's life from his boyhood in Ohio before the Civil War, to his consularship in Italy under President Lincoln, to his rise as editor of Atlantic Monthly. It looks at his writing, which included novels, poems, plays, children's books, and criticism. Howells had many powerful friendships among the literati of his day; and here we find an especially rich examination of the relationship between Howells and Mark Twain. Howells was, as Twain called him, "the boss" of literary critics—his support almost single-handedly made the careers of many writers, including African Americans like Paul Dunbar and women like Sarah Orne Jewett. Showcasing many noteworthy personalities—Henry James, Edmund Gosse, H. G. Wells, Stephen Crane, Emily Dickinson, and many others—William Dean Howells portrays a man who stood at the center of American literature through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Editha

Editha PDF Author: William Dean Howells
Publisher: Creative Education
ISBN: 9780886825850
Category : War
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A girl with a romantic concept of war has her beliefs challenged when her fiance goes off to fight.

The Master and the Dean

The Master and the Dean PDF Author: Rob Davidson
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826264689
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
"Comparative study of Henry James's and William Dean Howells's literary criticism. Examines the interrelationship between the men, emphasizing their aesthetic concerns and attitudes toward the market and audience, and their beliefs concerning the moral value of fiction and the United States as a literary subject, and writings about each other"--Provided by publisher.

A Hazard Of New Fortunes

A Hazard Of New Fortunes PDF Author: William Dean Howells
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
ISBN: 3849657493
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
No one can complain that in this story Mr. Howells has taken his type from the commonplace. It is a study of life in New York, and the author has brought together such a gallery of odd and strongly differentiated characters as could perhaps be found in no other city on the continent, while the conditions and phases of social life represented are not less distinctive and peculiar. The Marches, it is true, are from Boston, but they serve the purpose of external points of observation, whence to note and sufficiently to emphasize those features of our city life which of necessity strike strangers and outsiders most forcibly and with the greatest freshness of suggestion. A new magazine is founded with the money of old Dryfoos, a "natural gas millionaire," whose primary object is to give his son Conrad — a youth of saint-like character and dominant altruism — opportunity to become a businessman. The prime mover of the venture is Fulkerson, a true Western Yankee, if the phrase be allowable, whose engaging impudence, fluent slang, indomitable assurance, and substantial loyalty and goodness of heart are sure to make him as great a favorite with the reader as he is with all who know him in the story. The Marches, too, are fantastic, and nowhere has Mr. Howells better presented that peculiar American humor which finds motives for half-sarcastic jest and quip in even the most serious things, less out of lightness of heart than from an almost desperate conscious ness of hopeless incongruities and perplexities inherent in the general scheme. The picture is in itself a condemnation of and protest against that rank growth of naked materialism which is the most depressing feature of our time. The character and the faults of society are shown plainly but temperately — the spirit of levity, the love of spectacle, the repugnance to serious thinking, the absence of jealousy of popular rights, constantly encroached upon, ignored and subordinated to selfish corporate or individual interests. The aspects of the city are also most graphically and admirably described in many a wandering of the Marches, and the book exhibits an amount of local study undertaken by the author which speaks well for his conscientiousness, and adds much to the charm and permanent interest of the story. There is, as we have intimated, an unwonted variety and an unwonted force in " A Hazard of New Fortunes." If it can hardly be said to have a dominant note, it is none the less a faithful and carefully elaborated study of New York life, and it presents some of the most salient characteristics of that life in a very impressive and artistic manner. Most readers will, we think, agree with us that the change in method here shown is a change for the better. Never, certainly, has Mr. Howells written more brilliantly, more clearly, more firmly, or more attractively, than in this instance. The reversion to these strong individualizations seems to have put new vigor into his hands, and he deals with the deeper tragedies, the graver emotions of life, with a power which may perhaps be regarded as a practical demonstration of the ultimate supremacy destined to be attained by Nature over Art ; by the true over the false Realism.

The Republic for which it Stands

The Republic for which it Stands PDF Author: Richard White
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199735816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 964

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Book Description
The newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands argues that the Gilded Age, along with Reconstruction--its conflicts, rapid and disorienting change, hopes and fears--formed the template of American modernity.

Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America

Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America PDF Author: Elsa Nettels
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813185521
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
No other American novelist has written so fully about language—grammar, diction, the place of colloquialism and dialect in literary English, the relation between speech and writing—as William Dean Howells. The power of language to create social, political, and racial identity was of central concern to Americans in the nineteenth century, and the implications of language in this regard are strikingly revealed in the writings of Howells, the most influential critic and editor of his age. In this first full-scale treatment of Howells as a writer about language, Elsa Nettels offers a historical overview of the social and political implications of language in post-Civil War America. Chapters on controversies about linguistic authority, American versus British English, literary dialect, and language and race relate Howells's ideas at every point to those of his contemporaries—from writers such as Henry James, Mark Twain, and James Russell Lowell to political figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John Hay. The first book to analyze in depth and detail the language of Howells's characters in more than a dozen novels, this path-breaking sociolinguistic approach to Howells's fiction exposes the fundamental contradiction in his realism and in the America he portrayed. By representing the speech that separates standard from nonstandard speakers, Howells's novels—which champion the democratic ideals of equity and unity—also demonstrate the power of language to reinforce barriers of race and class in American society. Drawing on unpublished letters of Howells, James, Lowell, and others and on scores of articles in nineteenth-century periodicals, this work of literary criticism and cultural history reaches beyond the work of one writer to address questions of enduring importance to all students of American literature and society.

Down & Out, on the Road

Down & Out, on the Road PDF Author: Kenneth L. Kusmer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195160963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
"A definitive history of homelessness in the United States..." -- page 4 of cover.

American Literary Realism, 1870-1910

American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Some vols. accompanied by separate issues called special number.

Down and Out, on the Road

Down and Out, on the Road PDF Author: Kenneth L. Kusmer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190281464
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Covering the entire period from the colonial era to the late twentieth century, this book is the first scholarly history of the homeless in America. Drawing on sources that include records of charitable organizations, sociological studies, and numerous memoirs of formerly homeless persons, Kusmer demonstrates that the homeless have been a significant presence on the American scene for over two hundred years. He probes the history of homelessness from a variety of angles, showing why people become homeless; how charities and public authorities dealt with this social problem; and the diverse ways in which different class, ethnic, and racial groups perceived and responded to homelessness. Kusmer demonstrates that, despite the common perception of the homeless as a deviant group, they have always had much in common with the average American. Focusing on the millions who suffered downward mobility, Down and Out, On the Road provides a unique view of the evolution of American society and raises disturbing questions about the repeated failure to face and solve the problem of homelessness.