These two nouvelles mark Howells' plunge into psychological realism. Their themes-a triangle of tragic agonies with psychological insights intriguingly proto-Freudian, and a drama of miscegenation-are anything but the "smiling", lightweight topics to which Howells has been supposed to have been confined. The maturity both of their art and of their moral insight lends them an impact much deeper and more permanent than that of the shriller, more merely commercial shocking fiction of our day. Edwin H. Cady's introduction places the books in the context of the development of Howells' life, work, art, thought, and sensibility. He helps the reader make immediate contact with the artistic methods and intentions of the author.

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.

A historically informed approach to realist-era American fiction, engaging with contemporary affect theory, evolutionary theory, studies of realism, and studies of affect in American literature

Longlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2007 Writing in 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois suggested that the goal for the African-American was 'to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture'.He was evoking 'culture' as a solution to the divisions within society, thereby adopting, in a very different context, an idea that had been influentially expressed by Matthew Arnold in the 1860s. Du Bois questioned the assumed universality of this concept by asking who, ultimately, is allowed into the 'kingdom of culture'? How does one come to speak from a position of cultural authority?This book adopts a transatlantic approach to explore these questions. It centres on four Victorian 'men of letters' "e; Matthew Arnold, William Dean Howells, W. B. Yeats and W. E. B. Du Bois "e; who drew on notions of ethnicity as a basis from which to assert their cultural authority. In comparative close readings of these figures Daniel Williams addresses several key areas of contemporary literary and cultural debate. The book questions the notion of 'the West' as it appears and re-appears in the formulations of postcolonial theory, challenges the widespread tendency to divide nationalism into 'civic' and 'ethnic' forms, and forces its readers to reconsider what they mean when they talk about 'culture', 'identity' and 'national literature'. Key Features*Offers a substantial, innovative intervention in transatlantic debates over race and ethnicity*Uses 4 intriguing authors to explore issues of national identity, racial purity and the use of literature as a marker of 'cultural capital'*A unique focus on Celtic identity in a transatlantic context*Sets up a dialogue between writers who believe in national identity and those who believe in cultural distinctiveness