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W. D. Howells' Defense of the Romance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 August 2021
Extract
Much of the modern disappointment with William Dean Howells' work grows from a failure to understand his aims. This misunderstanding arises partly because his literary rationale was far from being as systematic and uncompromising as has often been assumed; close study of the entire body of his critical essays and reviews shows that he did not reject all fiction which departed from a circumstantial fidelity to life. In essence, Howells felt that authenticity concerning human character was the touchstone of great art and that problems of method were secondary. Although he condemned most non-realistic fiction as untrue and therefore finally vicious morally, he was willing to allow imaginative play in that writing which did no harm or which, better still, aimed at faithfulness to the inner verity of existence. Howells, like Hawthorne and many other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers, distinguished between the realistic novel and the prose “romance,” and he of course generally preferred to write the realistic novel. But, instead of being “unsympathetic to books of romance” or harboring a “suspicion of all romantic tendencies including his own,” he also accepted the romance as an estimable genre of fiction.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1952
References
Notes
1 William Lyon Phelps, “An Appreciation,” North Amer. Rev., ccxii (July 1920), 18; Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds (New York, 1942), p. 7. George E. DeMille, Literary Criticism in America (New York, 1931), p. 192, wrote that Howells “had at last come to believe that whatever was opposite to romantic practice must be right.”
2 Atlantic Monthly, xxxi (Jan. 1873), 105.
3 Reviewing James's Hawthorne, Atlantic Monthly, xlv (Feb. 1880), 282; see also xlvi (Nov. 1880), 696-697.
4 My Literary Passions and Criticism and Fiction, Library Ed. (New York, 1911), p. 139.
5 A Boy's Town (New York, 1904), pp. 147, 183-184, 242.
6 Letter dated 25 Nov. 1860, in the Houghton Library, Harvard Univ.
7 Odd-Fellows Casket, i (May 1859), 443-444, and Ashtabula Sentinel, xxxv (24, 31 Jan. 1866), 1.
8 H. H. Boyesen, “A Dialogue between W. D. Howells and H. H. Boyesen,” McClure's Mag., i (June 1893), 7.
9 My Literary Passions, pp. 250-251, 161, 251; “Will the Novel Disappear?” North Amer. Rev., clxxv (Sept. 1902), 294. For other late praise of romance and romancers see Literature and Life (New York, 1902), p. 110; “Certain of the Chicago School of Fiction,” North Amer. Rev., clxxvi (May 1903), 746.
10 “Editor's Study,” Harper's Monthly, lxxii (May 1886), 972-973.
11 Atlantic Monthly, xxxv (April 1874), 491.
12 “Two Notable Novels,” Century Mag., N.S. vi (Aug. 1884), 633. For a similar comment on Bellamy's Dr. Heidenhoff's Process, see “Preface” to Bellamy's The Blindman's World and Other Stories (Boston, 1898), p. x.
13 Li}e in Letters of William Dean Howells, ed. Mildred Howells (New York, 1928), ii, 10; letter dated 22 Dec. 1890.
14 lxxvii (June 1888), 154-155.
15 See George Arms, “Howells's Unpublished Prefaces,” New England Quart., xvii (Dec. 1944), 589-591.
16 “Mark Twain,” Century Mag., N.S. ii (Sept. 1882), 782-783; “My Favorite Novelist,” Munsey's Mag., xvii (April 1897), 24; “The New Historical Romances,” North Amer. Rev., clxxi (Dec. 1900), 946; My Mark Twain (New York, 1910), pp. 49, 174, 178-179.
17 My Literary Passions, p. 176.
18 “My Favorite Novelist,” Munsey's Mag., xvii (April 1897), 18, 22.
19 My Literary Passions, p. 139. Howells favorably reviewed The Marble Faun for the Ohio State Journal, xxiii (24 March 1860), 2. See E. H. Cady, “W. D. Howells and the Ashtabula Sentinel,” Ohio State Archaeol. and Hist. Quart., liii (Jan.-March 1944), 41, for the information that Wm. C. Howells' paper reprinted Hawthorne and “conventional romances.” For other evidence of early interest in Hawthorne, see “Two Men,” Nation, i (26 Oct. 1865), 537; North Amer. Rev., crv (April 1867), 533, and cvii (July 1868), 111; “Scene,” Every Saturday, x (7 Jan. 1871), 11.
20 Atlantic Monthly, xl (Dec. 1877), 753; also xxix (May 1872), 624-626. See also “Editor's Study,” Harper's Monthly, lxxii (1886), 972.
21 The World of Chance (New York, 1893), pp. 84, 86-87. See also Indian Summer (Boston, 1885), pp. 93-94, and Literary Friends and 
(New York, 1900), pp. 116-117.
22 Imaginary Interviews (New York, 1910), p. 30; “The Personality of Hawthorne,” North Amer. Rev., clxxvii (Dec. 1903), 880.
23 Heroines of Fiction, ii, 240.
24 “Two Notable Novels,” Century tag., N.S. vi (Aug. 1884), 633. See also Atlantic, xlvi (Nov. 1880), 698. Howells particularly perceived realism in The Blithedale Romance; see My Literary Passions, p. 139, and Heroines of Fiction, i, 113, 175.
25 “My Favorite Novelist,” Munsey's Mag., xvii (April 1897), 22; Heroines of Fiction, i, 162, 164, 167-168.
26 Heroines of Fiction, ii, 262.
27 See “A Conjecture of Intensive Fiction,” North Amer. Rev., cciv (Dec. 1916), 871; such a distinction is anticipated in Heroines of Fiction, ii, 260-274. Yet, for a very late praise of “romance,” see “Editor's Easy Chair,” Harper's Monthly, cxxxix (Sept. 1919), 605-608.
28 “Editor's Easy Chair,” Harper's Monthly, cxvii (Oct. 1908), 798.
29 “Henry James, Jr.,” Century Mag., N.S. iii (Nov. 1882), 28.
30 “Problems of Existence in Fiction,” Literature, N.S. i (10 March 1899), 193-194; Heroines of Fiction, I, 221. See also “Lyof N. Tolstoy,” North Amer. Rev., clxxxvii (Dec. 1908), 855.
31 Heroines of Fiction, i, 90. See also Literature and Life, p. 122.
32 “The New Historical Romances,” North Amer. Rev., clxxi (Dec. 1900), 943. See also Heroines of Fiction, ii, 169.
33 “Henry James, Jr.,” Century Mag., N.S. iii (Nov. 1882), 27; My Literary Passions, pp. 140, 250; Heroines of Fiction, i, 176.
34 Heroines of Fiction, i, 176. See also ibid., 190; Literature and Life, p. 134; My Mark Twain, p. 48; “My Favorite Novelist,” Munsey's Mag., xvii (April 1897), 18, 22; “A Psychological Counter-Current in Recent Fiction,” North Amer. Rev., clxxiii (Dec. 1901), 875; “Editor's Easy Chair,” Harper's Monthly, cxvii (April 1909), 805.
35 Marrion Wilcox, “W. D. Howells's First Romance,” Harper's Bazaar, xvii (16 July 1894), 475. For a similar quoted comment see F. W. Halsey, ed. American Authors and Their Homes (New York, 1901), p. 107.
36 Marrion Wilcox, “Works of W. D. Howells—1860-96,” Harper's Weekly, xl (4 July 1896), 655-656.