Editing William Dean Howells (section)

==Biography==

===Early life and family===
William Dean Howells was born on March 1, 1837, in Martinsville, Ohio (now known as [[Martins Ferry, Ohio]]), to William Cooper Howells and Mary Dean Howells,<ref>Lynn, 35</ref> the second of eight children. He had Welsh, German, Irish, and English ancestry.<ref>{{cite book |author=William Dean Howells |year=1917 |orig-year=First published 1916 |title=Years of My Youth |url=https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/47060 |chapter=I |chapter-url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47060/47060-h/47060-h.htm#page_001 |publisher=Harper & Brothers |access-date=January 27, 2024 |quote=On my father's side my people were wholly Welsh, except his English grandmother, and on my mother's side wholly German, except her Irish father}}</ref> His father was a newspaper editor and printer who moved frequently around Ohio.<ref>William D.P. Bliss (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Social Reforms. Third Edition. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1897; pg. 698.</ref> In 1840, the family settled in [[Hamilton, Ohio]],<ref name=Lynn36>Lynn, 36</ref> where his father oversaw a [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig]] newspaper and followed [[The New Church|Swedenborgianism]].<ref>Olsen, 33–34</ref> Their nine years there were the longest period that they stayed in one place.<ref name=Lynn36/> The family had to live frugally, although the young Howells was encouraged by his parents in his literary interests.<ref>Olsen, 36</ref> He began at an early age to help his father with [[typesetting]] and printing work, a job known at the time as a [[printer's devil]]. In 1852, his father arranged to have one of his poems published in the ''[[Ohio State Journal]]'' without telling him.

===Early career===
In 1856, Howells was elected as a clerk in the [[Ohio House of Representatives|State House of Representatives]]. In 1858, he began to work at the ''Ohio State Journal'', where he wrote poetry and short stories, and also translated pieces from French, Spanish, and German. He avidly studied German and other languages and was greatly interested in [[Heinrich Heine]]. In 1860, he visited Boston, Massachusetts and met with writers [[James T. Fields]], [[James Russell Lowell]], [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.]], [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], [[Henry David Thoreau]], and [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]. He became a personal friend to many of them, including [[Henry Adams]], [[William James]], [[Henry James]], and [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.]]<ref>See, e.g., Smith, Harriet Elinor, ed., ''The Autobiography of Mark Twain'', Volume 1, University of California Press, 2010, p.475.</ref>

In 1860 Howells wrote [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s campaign biography ''Life of Abraham Lincoln'' and subsequently gained a [[Consul (representative)|consulship]] in Venice. He married Elinor Mead on Christmas Eve 1862 at the [[Embassy of the United States, Paris|American embassy in Paris]]. She was a sister of sculptor [[Larkin Goldsmith Mead]] and architect [[William Rutherford Mead]] of the firm [[McKim, Mead, and White]]. Among their children was architect [[John Mead Howells]].

===Editorship and other literary pursuits===
[[File:William Dean Howells House (Cambridge, MA).JPG|thumb|The [[William Dean Howells House (Cambridge)|William Dean Howells House]] in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was designed by his wife [[Elinor Mead Howells|Elinor Mead]], and it was occupied by Howells and his family from 1873 to 1878.]]Howells and his family returned to the United States in 1865 and settled in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]]. He wrote for various magazines, including ''[[The Atlantic Monthly]]'' and ''[[Harper's Magazine]]''. In January 1866, James Fields offered him a position as assistant editor at ''The Atlantic Monthly''; he accepted after successfully negotiating for a higher salary, though he was frustrated by Fields' close supervision.<ref>Goodman and Dawson, 107–108</ref>

Howells was made editor in 1871, after five years as assistant editor, and he remained in this position until 1881. In 1869, he met [[Mark Twain]] with whom he formed a longtime friendship. But his relationship with journalist [[Jonathan Baxter Harrison]] was more important for the development of his literary style and his advocacy of [[Realism (arts)|Realism]]. Harrison wrote a series of articles for ''The Atlantic Monthly'' during the 1870s on the lives of ordinary Americans.<ref>Fryckstedt 1958</ref> Howells gave a series of twelve lectures on "Italian Poets of Our Century" for the [[Lowell Institute]] during its 1870–71 season.<ref>Harriet Knight Smith, [https://archive.org/details/historyoflowelli00smitiala ''The History of the Lowell Institute''], Boston: Lamson, Wolffe and Co., 1898.</ref>
[[File:William Dean Howells (ca1870).jpg|left|thumb|296x296px|Howells circa 1870]]
Howells published his first novel ''Their Wedding Journey'' in 1872, but his literary reputation soared with the realist novel ''[[A Modern Instance]]'' (1882), which described the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel ''[[The Rise of Silas Lapham]]'' became his best known work, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur of the paint business. His social views were also strongly represented in the novels ''Annie Kilburn'' (1888), ''[[A Hazard of New Fortunes]]'' (1889), and ''[[An Imperative Duty]]'' (1891).

Howells was particularly outraged by the trials resulting from the [[Haymarket affair]], which led him to portray a similar riot in ''A Hazard of New Fortunes'' and to write publicly to protest the trials of the men allegedly involved in the affair. In his public writing and in his novels, he drew attention to pressing social issues of the time. He joined the [[American Anti-Imperialist League|Anti-Imperialist League]] in 1898, in opposition to the [[Philippine–American War|U.S. annexation of the Philippines]].

His poems were collected in 1873 and 1886, and a volume was published in 1895 under the title ''[[Stops of Various Quills]]''. He was the initiator of the school of American realists, and he had little sympathy with any other type of fiction. However, he frequently encouraged new writers in whom he discovered new ideas or new fictional techniques, such as [[Stephen Crane]], [[Frank Norris]], [[Hamlin Garland]], [[Harold Frederic]], [[Abraham Cahan]], [[Sarah Orne Jewett]], and [[Paul Laurence Dunbar]].

===Later years===
[[File:Picture of William Dean Howells at his Office Desk.jpg|thumb|Howells in his home office, before 1902]]
In 1902, Howells published ''[[The Flight of Pony Baker]]'', a book for children partly inspired by his own childhood.<ref>Olsen, 5</ref> The same year, he bought a summer home overlooking the [[Piscataqua River]] in [[Kittery Point, Maine]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.seacoastnh.com/Famous-People/Link-Free-or-Die/William-Dean-Howells-at-Kittery/|title=William Dean Howells at Kittery|author=J. Dennis Robinson|work=seacoastnh.com}}</ref> He returned there annually until his wife's death, then left the house to his son and family and moved to a house in [[York Harbor, Maine|York Harbor]]. His grandson, John Noyes Mead Howells, donated the property to Harvard University as a memorial in 1979.<ref>[http://www.hres.harvard.edu/RRE/TenantWeb/Maine/Howells/about.htm William Dean Howells Memorial House, Kittery Point, Maine] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100627103741/http://www.hres.harvard.edu/RRE/TenantWeb/Maine/Howells/about.htm |date=2010-06-27 }}</ref> In 1904 he was one of the first seven people chosen for membership in the [[American Academy of Arts and Letters]], of which he became president.

In February 1910, Elinor Howells began using [[morphine]] to treat her worsening [[neuritis]].<ref>Goodman and Dawson, 401</ref> She died on May 6, a few days after her birthday, and only two weeks after the death of Howells's friend Mark Twain. [[Henry James]] offered his condolences, writing "I think of this laceration of your life with an infinite sense of all it will mean for you".<ref>Lynn, 322</ref> Howells and his daughter Mildred decided to spend part of the year in their Cambridge home on [[Concord Avenue (Cambridge, Massachusetts)|Concord Avenue]]; though, without Elinor, they found it "dreadful in its ghostliness and ghastliness".<ref>Goodman and Dawson, 402</ref>

Howells died in his sleep shortly after midnight on May 11, 1920,<ref>Goodman and Dawson, 432</ref> of [[influenza]]<ref>{{Cite news |date=12 May 1920 |title=W.D. Howells dies suddenly at 83 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1920/05/12/archives/wd-howells-dies-suddenly-at-83-dominant-figure-in-american-letters.html |access-date=24 November 2024 |work=[[The New York Times]] |pages=11}}</ref> and was buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cambridgema.gov/theworks/ourservices/cambridgecemetery.aspx|title=Cambridge Cemetery - Public Works - City of Cambridge, Massachusetts|author=ISITE Design|work=cambridgema.gov}}</ref> Eight years later his daughter published his correspondence as a biography of his literary life.