W. D. HOWELLS
Reading edition
Mr. James was a student of men and women in society, using that word in its narrower sense; Mr. Howells, who is also a keen observer, has dealt with less sophisticated men and women, and has given us American types unmodified by other influences. A man of deep sympathy with his fellows and sharing in his heart the sorrow and pain of the common lot, a lover of Tolstoi and a professed realist, with a strong leaning toward constructive socialism, Mr. Howells has kept his fiction free from any kind of preaching. He has understood his vocation as an artist, and has not made his novels serve his social and political doctrines. Although a man of strong convictions, he is a writer whose touch is notably light, and whose humor is delightfully unforced and happy.
W. D. HOWELLS IN HIS LIBRARY
Born in the Central West, Mr. Howells has kept its democracy of spirit and reinforced it by familiarity with modern languages and literature. In his lighter work he has made studies of the whims and foibles of certain feminine types in this country, of such fidelity that they have disturbed those who believe that Americans should tell the truth about themselves only to themselves, and that to take Europe into the national confidence is a kind of petty treason. But if Mr. Howells has seemed sometimes to draw American women with too light a hand, no one so well as he has conveyed a sense of the purity of American women, and the wholesome tone of American social life outside the very limited circle of what is known as the “Fast Set,”—a group of men and women who are representative not of a nation, but of the attitude toward life so strikingly defined in “The House of Mirth.” In his graver mood Mr. Howells has given us “The Rise of Silas Lapham,” one of the lasting achievements of American fiction, and “A Hazard of New Fortunes,” both original studies of American life during the age of great fortune-making. The charm of Mr. Howells’ art and the refinement of his humor have not given him the popularity of the more dramatic novelists; but he has made a place of high importance for himself in American literature, and in the hearts of a host of readers who have discerned in him a singularly pure and lovable nature.