World and I, September 1st, 2000
Linda Simon is associate professor of English at Skidmore College.
Before beginning his career as a novelist, William Dean Howells as editor of the Atlantic Monthly rejected a poem submitted to the magazine. "What I want you to do for us--and yourself, too," he advised the poet, "is to take some subject of the life about you. ... Some romance of country-life--or town life--something native, natural, racy- -we want this; and I believe you can give it." This advice surely informed Howells' own fiction: From Their Wedding Journey, published in 1872, to The Vacation of the Kelwyns, published po...
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