Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism, Travel Sketches, Autobiography

Note: Links to the University of Virginia Text Center no longer work since it has moved to a subscription database model. New links to free versions will be provided if available.

• Howells’s “Editor’s Study” columns online.  This page provides links to and brief descriptions of all the Harper’s “Editor’s Study” columns available at Cornell’s Making of America site.
• Criticism and Fiction
• American Literary Centers (from Literature And Life)
• Belated Guest, a (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
• Cambridge Neighbors (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
• Confessions of a Summer Colonist (from Literature and Life)
• Editor’s Relations With The Young Contributor (from Literature And Life)
• “Eighty Years and After” Harper’s, March 2000.
• <Last Days In A Dutch Hotel (from Literature And Life)
• Literary Boston as I Knew It (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
• Literary Friends and Acquaintance; a Personal Retrospect of American Authorship
• “Literary Boston Thirty Years Ago”  Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. / Volume 91, Issue 546 (November, 1895; page images from MOA)
• Literature and Life (Complete) Contents: Man of Letters in Business –Confessions of a Summer Colonist — The YoungContributor — Last Days in a Dutch Hotel –Anomalies of the Short Story — Spanish Prisoners of War — American Literary Centers — Standard Household Effect Co. — Notes of aVanished Summer — Worries of a Winter Walk –Summer Isles of Eden — Wild Flowers of the  Asphalt — A Circus in the Suburbs — A SheHamlet — The Midnight Platoon — The Beach atRockaway — Sawdust in the Arena — At a Dime Museum — American Literature in Exile — The Horse Show — The Problem of the Summer — Aesthetic New York Fifty-odd Years Ago — FromNew York into New England — The Art of theAdsmith — The Psychology of Plagiarism — Puritanism in American Fiction — The What and How in Art — Politics in American Authors – Storage — “Floating down the River on the O-hi-o”.
• My First Visit to New England (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
• Roundabout to Boston (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
• Staccato Notes of a Vanished Summer (from Literature and Life)
• Standard Household-Effect Company, the (from Literature and Life)

Travel top

• Familiar Spanish Travels
• Italian Journeys.  Page images at the Michigan Making of America Site.Italian Journeys
• Last Days in a Dutch Hotel (from Literature and Life)
• “A Little Swiss Sojourn (First Paper)” and “A Little Swiss Sojourn” (Second Paper) Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. / Volume 76, Issue 453-4 (February and March 1888)
• London Films
• Roman Holidays, and Others
• Seven English Cities
• Venetian Life

Literary Criticism top

• American Literary Centers (from Literature and Life)
• List of Howells’s Works at Project Gutenberg.
• Complete Works of W. D. Howells (Project Gutenberg)
• Complete Project Gutenberg William Dean Howells Literature Essays Includes Contents: Literary Friends and Acquaintances: Biographical — My First Visit to New England –First Impressions of Literary New York –Roundabout to Boston — Literary Boston As I Knew It — Oliver Wendell Holmes — The White Mr. Longfellow — Studies of Lowell — Cambridge Neighbors — A Belated Guest — My Mark Twain. Literature and Life:  Man of Letters in Business — Confessions of a  Summer Colonist — The Young Contributor –Last Days in a Dutch Hotel — Anomalies of theShort Story — Spanish Prisoners of War –American Literary Centers — Standard Household Effect Co. — Notes of a Vanished Summer — Worries of a Winter Walk — Summer Isles of Eden — Wild Flowers of the Asphalt — A Circus in the Suburbs — A She Hamlet — The  Midnight Platoon — The Beach at Rockaway — Sawdust in the Arena — At a Dime Museum –American Literature in Exile — The Horse Show — The Problem of the Summer — Aesthetic New York Fifty-odd Years Ago — From New York intoNew England — The Art of the Adsmith — ThePsychology of Plagiarism — Puritanism inAmerican Fiction — The What and How in Art — Politics in American Authors – Storage — “Floating down the River on the O-hi-o” My Literary Passions: The Bookcase at Home — Goldsmith — Cervantes – Irving — First Fiction and Drama —  Longfellow’s “Spanish Student” – Scott — Lighter Fancies – Pope — Various Preferences — Uncle Tom’s Cabin — Ossian — Shakespeare — Ik Marvel – Dickens — Wordsworth, Lowell, Chaucer — Macaulay — Critics and Reviews — ANon-literary Episode – Thackeray — “LazarilloDe Tormes” — Curtis, Longfellow, Schlegel – Tennyson – Heine — De Quincey, Goethe, Longfellow — George Eliot, Hawthorne, Goethe,  Heine — Charles Reade — Dante — Goldoni, Manzoni, D’azeglio — “Pastor Fido,” “Aminta,” “Romola,” “Yeast,” “Paul Ferroll” —  Erckmann-chatrian, Bjorstjerne Bjornson –Tourguenief, Auerbach — Certain Preferences and Experiences — Valdes, Galdos, Verga, Zola, Trollope, Hardy — Tolstoy.   Criticism and Fiction.
• Essays and Versions
• Editor’s Relations with the Young Contributor (from Literature and Life)
• Modern Italian Poets
•  My Literary Passions Contents: The Bookcase at Home — Goldsmith –Cervantes — Irving — First Fiction and Drama — Longfellow’s “Spanish Student” — Scott —  Lighter Fancies — Pope — Various Preferences — Uncle Tom’s Cabin — Ossian — Shakespeare  — Ik Marvel — Dickens — Wordsworth, Lowell, Chaucer — Macaulay — Critics and Reviews — A  Non-literary Episode — Thackeray — “Lazarillo De Tormes” — Curtis, Longfellow, Schlegel — Tennyson — Heine — De Quincey, Goethe,Longfellow — George Eliot, Hawthorne, Goethe, Heine — Charles Reade — Dante — Goldoni, Manzoni, D’azeglio — “Pastor Fido,” “Aminta,””Romola,” “Yeast,” “Paul Ferroll” — Erckmann-chatrian, Bjorstjerne Bjornson –Tourguenief, Auerbach — Certain Preferences and Experiences — Valdes, Galdos, Verga, Zola, Trollope, Hardy — Tolstoy.
• Some Anomalies of the Short Story (from Literature and Life) (from Literature And  Life)
• “Edward Bellamy,” prefatory sketch from The Blindman’s World and Other Stories (1898)
• “Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt” (from the University of Virginia)
• Introduction to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896)
  
• On Hawthorne from Literary Friends and Acquaintance (1900)
• My Mark Twain (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
• Oliver Wendell Holmes (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
• Excerpts from “Opinions of W. D. Howells,” New York Sun (April 30, 1899) on Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”
• White Mr. Longfellow, the (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
• Studies of Lowell (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
• “Frank Norris” (from the University of Virginia)
• On Walt Whitman’s November Boughs from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 78 (February 1889).
• Emile Zola

• Howells on James
• Henry James, Jr. (from Project Gutenberg)Updated link Version for Palm Pilot

• Review of Henry James’s Hawthorne (originally from Eric Eldred’s Hawthorne site)

• Howells on Twain top
• Mark Twain: An Inquiry.”A response to Twain’s “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” North American Review, February 1901.
• My Mark Twain (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) (Project Gutenberg)
• My Mark Twain (from Jim Zwick’s Twain Site at boondocks.net) Includes W. D. Howells’s My Mark

Twain with additional criticism not included in that volume, including his speech at the Nov. 1900 Lotos Club Welcome Home dinner, the introduction to Mark Twain’s Speeches, and his Editor’s Easy Chair reviews of Mark Twain: A Biography and Mark Twain’s

• Letters. Updated link

My Mark Twain (fromLiterary Friends And Acquaintance)

• Review (1869) of The Innocents Abroad 
• Review of Tom Sawyer in the Atlantic Monthly (May 1876) (from the University of Virginia and from The Atlantic Unbound site)
•  Essays top
• The Man of Letters as a Man of Business
• The Man of Letters as a Man of Business ; Version for Palm Pilot Scribner’s Magazine 14 (1893), 429-446.
• A Psychological Counter-Current in Recent Fiction Version for Palm Pilot
• “The Turning of the Dove” (from Jim Zwick’s Twain site)
• “The Country Printer” (Scribner’s, May 1893; from Cornell’s Making of America site)
• from the “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s Monthly (1920)
• <“Philippine Casuistry,” Harper’s Weekly  46 (7 June 1902)

Modern Italian Poets

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