(born March 1, 1837, Martins Ferry, Ohio, U.S.—died May 11, 1920, New York, N.Y.) U.S. novelist and critic. He wrote a campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln (1860) and served as consul in Venice during Lincoln's administration.
As editor of the Atlantic Monthly (1871–81), he became a preeminent figure in late 19th-century American letters. A champion of literary realism, he was one of the first to recognize the genius of Mark Twain and Henry James. His own novels (from 1872) depict America as it changed from a simple, egalitarian society where luck and pluck were rewarded to one in which social and economic gulfs were becoming unbridgeable. His best-known work, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), is about a self-made man's efforts to fit into Boston society. Howells risked his livelihood with his plea for clemency for the anarchists involved in the Haymarket Riot, and his deepening disillusionment with American society is reflected in the late novels Annie Kilburn (1888) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890).
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