Though his reputation today is neither as high as it was in 1900 nor as low as it fell in the 1920s, it rests solidly on his undeniable merits as a prolific, versatile, and influential author during half a century of American literary life. He not only wrote forty-three novels and story collections, of which a handful have won a permanent place in American letters, but he also was an im- portant editor, critic, and literary arbiter for two generations. Although he was a self-educated midwesterner, he slipped effortlessly into the cultural life of literary Boston, where as editor of the Atlantic Monthly he forged a link between the older writers of New England's flowering and his post-Civil War contemporaries. Later, as occupant of the "Editor's Study" and the "Editor's Easy Chair" columns in Harper's Weekly, he vigorously promulgated his theories of literary realism and helped shape the course of American literature.
This is a free page. This page contains 142 words. This
biography contains 18,467 words (approx. 62 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our William Dean Howells Access Pass.
