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In his first period Howells was poetic and spontaneous, in his second he was deliberate and artistic, in his third he was scientific and ethical. The last period began in a general way at the opening of the nineties with the publication, perhaps, of A Hazard of New Fortunes. He had spent another year in Europe, and in 1886 had removed to New York to do editorial work for the Harpers.
Now began what undoubtedly was the most voluminous literary career in the history of American literature. He took charge of the "Easy Chair" in Harper's Monthly, writing for it material equivalent to a volume a year, and in addition he poured out novels, books of travel, sketches, reviews, juveniles, autobiographies, comedies, farces, essays, editings, biographies—a mass of material equaled in bulk only by the writings of men like Southey or Dumas. He had learned his art with completeness. The production of clear and precise and brilliant English had become second nature, and he could pour it out steadily and with speed.
His novels more and more now began to conform to his realistic theories. The story sank gradually from prominence, and gradually analysis and scientific purpose took its place. Annie Kilburn, 1888, may be taken as the point of transition. The story could be told in a single chapter. There is no love-making, no culminating marriage or engagement, no passion, no crime, no violence greater than the flashing of eyes, no mystery, no climax. It is the afternoon talk of the ladies of a rural parish. For chapter after chapter they babble on, assisted now and then by the doctor or the minister or the lawyer who drops in for a cup of tea. As in the work of James, one may turn a dozen pages and find the same group still refining upon the same theme over the same tea-cups. The object of the author is not progress in events, but progress in characterization and ethical analysis. Through the mouths of these talkers he is discussing the problems of the rural church and the rural community. He attempts to settle nothing finally, but he sets the problem before the reader in all its phases, and the reader may come to his own conclusion.
This novel is typical of all the fiction of the later Howells. Everywhere now problems—moral, social, psychological—problems discussed by means of endless dialogue. A Hazard of New Fortunes is almost as long as Pamela, and when it is ended there is no logical reason for the ending save that the novelist has used the space allotted to him. Another volume could easily have been added telling of the experiences of the Dreyfooses in Europe. The novelist may stop at any point, for he is not telling a story, he is painting character, and manners and developing a thesis. In Annie Kilburn the effect of the sudden ending is disconcerting. It is like the cutting off of a yard of cloth.
Howells had passed under the powerful influence of Tolstoy. "As much as one merely human being can help another," he declares, "I believe that he has helped me; he has not influenced me in esthetics only, but in ethics, too, so that I can never again see life in the way I saw it before I knew him." It is absurd, however, to think that any influence could fundamentally have changed the art of a man like Howells in his fiftieth year. What Tolstoy did for him was to confirm and deepen tendencies in his work that already had become established and to turn his mind from the contemplation exclusively of manners and men in their actuality to problems ethical and social. He gave to him a message and a wider view of art. "What I feel sure is that I can never look at life in the mean and sordid way that I did before I read Tolstoy." "He has been to me that final consciousness, which he speaks of so wisely in his essay on 'Life.'"
As an example of this final Howells we may read The Landlord of Lion's Head, or The Traveler from Altruria, or The Quality of Mercy, which are not so much novels as minute studies of social or moral phases of the times, illustrated by means of a particular case and made clear by voluminous details. Minor characters serve as a chorus as the case proceeds, and the final effect is sermonic rather than novelistic. The poetic and the esthetic have yielded to the ethical and socialistic. In America every art ends at last in a sermon.