The “Dean of American Letters”--that is what William Dean Howells
is called. He is and has been for half a century the literary
leader of America, and well he deserves the title! James Russell
Lowell said of him that he “is one of the chief honors of our
literature.” He has never written a bad sentence, never struck
a false note. He is the leading representative of the realistic
school of American fiction.
William Dean Howells might with truth be called a “self-made man
of letters.” He was born at Martin Ferry, Ohio, on March 1, 1837.
His father, William Cooper Howells, was a printer and editor, whose
library was large and well chosen for that time. It was in this
library that the future novelist picked up most of his education.
As usual in a small country town, the regular schooling consisted
only of the “three R’s”; but Howells was an omniverous reader. He
particularly enjoyed poetry. It is said that even as a small boy
he wrote verse, setting it into type himself. Whether this was
ever printed is not known; but surely some space in his father’s
newspaper must have been found for these productions of his
juvenile pen.
In 1851 the family fortunes met with disaster, and Howells went to
work as compositor on the Ohio State Journal at a salary of four
dollars a week. He soon graduated into journalism, and at the age
of twenty-two was news editor of the Columbus, Ohio, State Journal.
Howells’ first published work appeared in 1860. The “Poems of Two
Friends” were written with John J. Piatt. He began to contribute to
the Atlantic Monthly, then just founded, about this time also. A
campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln was written by him in 1860.
For this he was appointed consul at Venice, where he remained until
1865. There he studied the Italian language and literature, and
broadened his education considerably.
On his return to the United States he wrote for the New York
Tribune and the Nation for a time. Then in 1866 he became assistant
editor of the Atlantic Monthly, becoming editor six years later. He
was a model magazine editor.
For awhile he contributed to Harper’s Magazine; then he became
editor of the Cosmopolitan, and in 1900 revived “The Editor’s Easy
Chair” for Harper’s. He is at present the writer of this department.
Mr. Howells has received many honorary degrees. Harvard and Yale
have both conferred on him the degree of Master of Arts, while he
has received the degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale, Oxford,
Columbia, and Princeton, and the degree of Doctor of Laws from
Adelbert College. In 1909 he was elected president of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. Since 1885 the novelist has lived in
New York City.
Howells is a great realist and a perfect artist in words. He was
once asked if he never lost himself in his work and was carried
away by what he was writing.
“Never,” he answered. “The essence of achievement is to keep
outside, to be entirely dispassionate, as a sculptor must be,
molding his clay.”
And indeed of all American writers Howells comes the nearest to
success in holding the mirror up to Nature.
[Illustration: THOMAS NELSON PAGE]
Thomas Nelson Page, a novelist who writes of the fast vanishing
old order of the South, is the subject of one of the six
intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “American Novelists.”