William Dean Howells
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The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies...
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One of the most influential authors of the late nineteenth century, and a former editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine, William Dean Howells wrote more than fifty novels, as well as plays, memoirs, and poetry collections. Opposed to the sentimentalism, contrived heroism, and theatrical endings in fiction, he developed a literary style based on unvarnished realism. This unique genre is brilliantly depicted in A Modern Instance, a novel...
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This novel from popular nineteenth-century American author William Dean Howells features a visitor from a mysterious distant island known as Altruria. The contrast between the utopian island community and conditions in 1890s America provides remarkable insight into the social and cultural issues facing the country then -- and now. A must-read for fans of utopian fantasy and science fiction. As part of our mission to publish great works of literary...
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Indian Summer is often considered William Dean Howells's best novel after The Rise of Silas Lapham. Mark Twain commended the novel by declaring to Howells, "You are really my only author," and Howells himself considered this tale about a middle-aged man's misdirected love for a widow's young ward as among his best character studies.
5) London Films
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Howells wrote several captivating travel books, including Italian Journeys, Venetian Life, and Certain Delightful English Towns. Here, he turns his observant and sometimes critical eye to London, presenting a series of sketches of the city as if they were mental movies.
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William Dean Howells served as a diplomat in Venice, Italy, a result of which is this delightful travel narrative. In Italian Journeys, Italy comes alive—Howells details a grand adventure as he makes his way around the country by land and sea, and visits such fabled cities as Rome, Naples, and Genoa.
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Howells recoge en Vida veneciana sus recuerdos de los dos años en que, en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, residió en Venecia como miembro del cuerpo diplomático estadounidense.
En estas páginas, según Henry James, Howells se muestra como uno de los escritores norteamericanos con mayor encanto, gracias a su agudeza y a su vivacidad como observador, y como un viajero sentimental, que nos sirve de guía por los lugares menos conocidos pero más...
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A naïve Massachusetts schoolteacher sails to Italy, where she is harassed by a drunk and meets a Boston socialite who will become her husband. The Lady of the Aroostook explores a favorite theme of Howells-conflicting social habits, in this case those of the American village and those of the American city.
11) The Kentons
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"You have done nothing more true and complete," wrote Henry James about William Dean Howells's novel The Kentons. Here, Howells follows a Midwestern family as they travel first to New York and then to Holland-in order to take the daughter, Ellen, away from an abusive relationship. Along the way they explore the contrasts between their Ohio manners and those of the regions they visit, a familiar theme in Howells's work.
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William Dean Howells frequently drew on his Midwestern childhood for his fiction. Based on an incident in Ohio that had always fascinated him, The Leatherwood God tells the intriguing tale of how a charlatan named Joseph Dylks, claiming to be a messenger of God (or even God himself), exploited the pious townspeople, split their devout community in two, and then disappeared.
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Some of William Dean Howells's best fiction examines the contrast between different manners or levels of sophistication, a subject made familiar to him in part by his sojourn as an American in Italy. This collection of stories shows American and Italian manners in conflict, drawing on Howells's own experiences as a diplomat in Venice.
15) April Hopes
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William Dean Howells, the highly respected author of novels of social realism, occasionally turned his storytelling skills to romantic comedies. In 1888 he published April Hopes, a comedy of manners that follows the romantic complications between a young woman and her fiancé.
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From his perch as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, author, editor, and literary critic William Dean Howells discussed his theories of realism in literature in his column, "The Editor's Study." Highly influential, this collection of Howells's essays and ideas is an invaluable resource for any reader or student with a passion for literature.
18) Venetian Life
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At the outbreak of the Civil War, Howells was appointed United States consul in Venice, Italy. In Venetian Life, an utterly engaging travelogue, Howells revises a series of travel letters he had written about his experiences in Venice for the Boston Advertiser. Honest in its love for (yet discomfort in) Venice, it would be followed by Italian Journeys.
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William Dean Howells spent scarcely a year in the classroom, but his father's newspaper offices afforded an invaluable education. In this charming memoir, Howells recalls, "I could set type very well, and at ten years and onward till journalism became my university, the printing office was mainly my school."
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This 1907 utopian romance is the final volume in the trilogy that includes A Traveler from Alturia (1894) and Letters of an Alturian Traveler (1904). The novel takes the form of letters from the protagonist, Aristides Homos, to his friend Cyril. In New York City, Homos falls in love with Evelith Strange, a socialite whose lifestyle conflicts with her Christian values-values that Homos could help her regain back in utopian Alturia, if she accepts his...