Although Mr. Howells did not go to college, he received many honorary higher degrees, and was offered professorships by three Universities (including that which had been held by Longfellow and Lowell at Harvard); but he refused these, not considering himself fitted for such work. In his editorial capacity he gave much advice and help to authors who afterward became famous. He died in 1920.
Suggestions for Reading
1. For just appraisement of Mr. Howells, it is necessary to be familiar with the facts of his life, and with his theories of fiction. For his life the two autobiographical books Years of My Youth and My Literary Passions are most valuable. After reading these, it is possible to see the large use of autobiographical material in the novels.
2. It is interesting to group the books of Howells according to the sources of the material: (1) those growing out of his early life in Ohio; (2) those growing out of his life abroad; (3) those growing out of his life in Boston and New York. This last class might well be subdivided into those written before he came under the influence of Tolstoi and those written after. The turning-point is in A Hazard of New Fortunes. Does Mr. Howells’s interest in sociological problems add to or lessen the final value of his work?
3. The realism of Howells set a standard for American literature, the effect of which has not yet passed. Study his theories of fiction (Criticism and Fiction, and Literature and Life) and consider the good and bad effects of his work upon the development of the novel.
4. Use the following quotation from Van Wyck Brooks, on Howells’s “panoramic theory” of the novel as a test of his work:
To make a work of art, it is necessary to take a piece out of life and round it off; and, so long as the piece is perfectly rounded off and complete in itself, so long as the chosen group of characters are perfectly proportioned in relation to one another, there is no need to introduce an artificial chain of action.
5. Howells’s style has often been admired. Try to analyze it into its elements. Consider Mark Twain’s judgment:
For forty years his English has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the sustained exhibition of certain great qualities—clearness, compression, verbal exactness and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of phrasing—he is, in my belief, without his peer in the English-writing world.
6. Can you make any judgment now as to Howells’s future place in American literature?