Contemporary American Literature Part 34

6. Someone has called Mr. Herrick "a discouraged idealist." Is this just?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Man Who Wins. 1895.

Literary Love Letters and Other Stories. 1896.

The Gospel of Freedom. 1898.

Love's Dilemmas. 1898.

The Web of Life. 1900.

The Real World. 1901.

Their Child. 1903.

*The Common Lot. 1904.

The Memoirs of an American Citizen. 1905.

*The Master of the Inn. 1908.

*Together. 1908.

A Life for a Life. 1910.

The Healer. 1911.

One Woman's Life. 1913.

His Great Adventure. 1913.

Clark's Field. 1914.

The World Decision. 1916.

The Conscript Mother. 1916.

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Bjorkman, E. Voices of Tomorrow. 1913.

Cooper.

Acad. 75 ('08): 331.

Bookm. 20 ('04): 192 (portrait), 220; 28 ('08): 350 (portrait); 38 ('13): 274.

Critic, 44 ('04): 112 (portrait).

Cur. Op. 54 ('13): 317 (portrait).

Dial, 56 ('14): 5.

Lit. Digest, 44 ('12): 426 (portrait).

Nation, 113 ('21): 230.

No. Am. 189 ('09): 812. (Howells.) Outlook, 78 ('04): 862, 864 (portrait).

Poet Lore, 19 ('08): 337.

R. of Rs. 42 ('10): 123 (portrait); 43 ('11): 380 (portrait); 49 ('14): 621.

+Robert Cortes Holliday ("Murray Hill")+--essayist, critic.

Born at Indianapolis, 1880. Studied at the Art Students' League, New York, 1899-1902, and at the University of; Kansas, 1903-4. Ill.u.s.trator for magazines, 1904-5. Bookseller with Scribner's, 1906-11. Librarian, 1912-3. Held various editorial positions with New York publishers, 1913-8. a.s.sociate editor of _The Bookman_, 1918, and editor, 1919--.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Booth Tarkington. 1918.

The Walking Stick Papers. 1918.

Joyce Kilmer, A Memoir. 1918.

Peeps at People. 1919.

Broome Street Straws. 1919.

Men and Books and Cities. 1920.

Turns about Town. 1921.

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Bookm. 47 ('18): 149 (portrait); 48 ('18): 478.

Dial, 64 ('18): 297; 65 ('18): 419.

See also _Book Review Digest_, 1918-21.

+William Dean Howells+--novelist, dramatist, critic, poet.

Born at Martins Ferry, Ohio, 1837. Of Welsh, English, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Irish ancestry. His father was a country editor, and Mr. Howells, living as he did under pioneer conditions, had very little formal education, but educated himself in working on newspapers as printer, correspondent, and editor. He read continually in boyhood, and taught himself to read six languages. As the result of a campaign life of Lincoln, he was appointed U.S. consul at Venice and lived there, 1861-5.

After a year on the staff of the _Nation_, he became a.s.sistant editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, 1866-72, and editor, 1872-81. Later, he became an editorial writer for _Harper's Magazine_, 1886-91, and finally writer of the "Editor's Easy Chair," for the same magazine.

Although Mr. Howells did not go to college, he received many honorary higher degrees, and was offered professorships by three Universities (including that which had been held by Longfellow and Lowell at Harvard); but he refused these, not considering himself fitted for such work. In his editorial capacity he gave much advice and help to authors who afterward became famous. He died in 1920.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

1. For just apprais.e.m.e.nt of Mr. Howells, it is necessary to be familiar with the facts of his life, and with his theories of fiction. For his life the two autobiographical books _Years of My Youth_ and _My Literary Pa.s.sions_ are most valuable. After reading these, it is possible to see the large use of autobiographical material in the novels.

2. It is interesting to group the books of Howells according to the sources of the material: (1) those growing out of his early life in Ohio; (2) those growing out of his life abroad; (3) those growing out of his life in Boston and New York. This last cla.s.s might well be subdivided into those written before he came under the influence of Tolstoi and those written after. The turning-point is in _A Hazard of New Fortunes_.

Does Mr. Howells's interest in sociological problems add to or lessen the final value of his work?

3. The realism of Howells set a standard for American literature, the effect of which has not yet pa.s.sed. Study his theories of fiction (_Criticism and Fiction_, and _Literature and Life_) and consider the good and bad effects of his work upon the development of the novel.

4. Use the following quotation from Van Wyck Brooks, on Howells's "panoramic theory" of the novel as a test of his work:

To make a work of art, it is necessary to take a piece out of life and round it off; and, so long as the piece is perfectly rounded off and complete in itself, so long as the chosen group of characters are perfectly proportioned in relation to one another, there is no need to introduce an artificial chain of action.

5. Howells's style has often been admired. Try to a.n.a.lyze it into its elements. Consider Mark Twain's judgment:

For forty years his English has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the sustained exhibition of certain great qualities--clearness, compression, verbal exactness and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of phrasing--he is, in my belief, without his peer in the English-writing world.

6. Can you make any judgment now as to Howells's future place in American literature?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poems by Two Friends. 1860. (With John J. Piatt.) Life of Abraham Lincoln. 1860.

Venetian Life. 1866.

Italian Journeys. 1867.