Author: Gwyneth Parry Howells

1My Mark Twain

By William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) became fast friends with Mark Twain from the moment in 1869 when Twain strode into the office of <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i> in Boston to thank Howell, then its assistant editor, for his favorable review of Innocents Abroad. When Howells became editor a few years later, The Atlantic Monthly began serializing many of Twain's works, among them his non-fiction masterpiece, <i>Life on the Mississippi</i>.<br><br> In My Mark Twain, Howells pens a literary memoir that includes such fascinating scenes as their meetings with former president Ulysses Grant who was then writing the classic autobiography that Twain would underwrite in the largest publishing deal until that time. But it is also notable for its affectionate descriptions of his friend's family life during Howell's many visits to the Twain residences in Hartford and Stormfield. (Summary by Dennis Sayers).

2Little Swiss Sojourn

By William Dean Howells

A charming brief account of a two months' autumnal stay on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. Howells, who was there with his family traveling from England to Italy, has a sharp eye not only for scenery and architecture, but for people and customs, both Swiss and foreign. (Summary by Nicholas Clifford)

A light-hearted romantic comedy in twelve short scenes, set during a tea party in the home of Mrs. Amy Somers, a widow who is courted by the ingenuous and delightful Mr. Willis Campbell. (Summary by Ruth Golding)<br /><br /> CAST: <br /><br />Narrator: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/4358">Kim Stich</a><br /> Mr. Willis Campbell: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/3595">Martin Geeson</a><br /> Mrs. Amy Somers: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/2607">Ruth Golding</a><br />Old Mr. Bemis: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/2234">Lars Rolander</a><br /> Mr. Roberts: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/5520">SamECircle</a><br /> Mrs. Roberts: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/2544">Annise</a><br /> Mrs. Curwen: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/1259">Elizabeth Klett</a><br /> Dr. Lawton: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/4535">Brett W. Downey</a><br /> Mr. Miller: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/4705">Algy Pug</a><br /> Mrs. Miller: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/5551">Laura C. Harrington</a><br /> Mrs. Crashaw: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/4964">rashada</a><br /> Young Mr. Bemis: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/2911">David Lawrence</a><br /> Mrs. Bemis: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/3536">Arielle Lipshaw</a><br /> Mrs. Wharton: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/1649">Kalynda</a><br /> Miss Bayly: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/3615">Lucy Perry</a> <br/><br /> Audio edited by Ruth Golding.

4Rise of Silas Lapham

By William Dean Howells

<i>The Rise of Silas Lapham</i> is the most widely read of W.D. Howells’ novels. An example of literary realism, the story is about a farmer (Silas Lapham) who launches a very successful paint business, and moves his family up the social ladder of Boston. Lapham, however, is not one of the new types of American businessman, the ruthless plutocrat, rather he is the old-fashioned trustworthy Yankee trader, and the story deals with how he fares in the industrial capitalist environment. It is also a novel of manners, telling the story of the courtship of a daughter, and the difficulties the family deals with in attempting to move from one social class to another. (Summary by Margaret Espaillat)

Recollections of Life in Ohio is the autobiography of William Cooper Howells (1807-1894), father of the American novelist William Dean Howells. The Howells were Welsh woolen mill owners. William Cooper's father brought the family to America in 1808--at a time when Great Britain actually forbid skilled workmen from emigrating, thus putting the father's practical knowledge of mill machinery in great demand. Small scale industries--paper and woolen mills, flour mills, and distilleries were sprouting apace with farms in the newly opened lands of Ohio, where the Howells settled in 1813. This was a time and place where neighbors joined together to raise log barns and husk corn, where local peach brandy was a staple drink, and where religious revivalism permeated the social fabric, fanned by itinerant preachers such as Johnny Appleseed. The Howells were originally Quakers, but William Cooper's father converted to an "enthusiastic" brand of Methodism, and William Cooper in later years followed the teachings of Swedenborg.<br /><br />William Cooper Howells' recollections see him herding the family pig down the road with a noose around its hind leg, acting as "corner man" at a log barn raising, curing tobacco in a smoke house, grubbing stumps, fighting snakes, and wrestling with what it meant to be "religious" at the camp meetings to which father took him. Early on, William Cooper showed a literary bent and an interest in politics. He became a printer and a newspaper man and, in the 1870's and 80's served as U.S. consul in Quebec and Toronto.<br /><br />The novelist William Dean Howells writes of his dad in the introduction to the Recollections: "My father was always a very close and critical observer, both of nature and human nature and equally a lover of both. He was not a poet in the artistic sense, but he was a poet in his view of life, the universe, creation; and his dream of it included man, as well as the woods and fields and their citizenship." Recollections of Life in Ohio is a fascinating and enjoyable read for anyone interested in U.S. frontier history.

6Annie Kilburn

By William Dean Howells

After 11 years in Rome, Annie Kilburn returns home to the US after the death of her father. But the home she knew is dramatically changed in many ways. She starts to work with sick children, and finds herself attached to them, and to the minister who helps her, Mr. Peck. (Summary by Stav Nisser)

7Indian Summer

By William Dean Howells

In his novel Indian Summer, William Dean Howells presents a mellow but realistic story that has the complete feel of that delightful time of the year, although the plot actually spans several seasons. The Indian summer aspect applies to a sophisticated gentleman, Theodore Colville, who has just entered his middle years as he returns to a scene, Florence, Italy, that played an important part in his early manhood. It was here twenty years earlier that he first fell in love, seemingly successfully until a sudden and harsh rejection. Now, after a once profitable career as a newspaper editor has ended, he is barely ensconced in the Italian city when he meets a lady from his past, a close friend of his lost love. Lina Bowen, now a widow with a young daughter, is an attractive and charming socialite among the American and English residents of Florence. Also living with her at this time as a temporary ward is a beautiful young girl just blossoming into womanhood, Imogene Graham.<br><br>Colville, although he still hides a shy nature, has become an exceedingly witty and entertaining conversationalist. He quickly becomes a favorite with young Effie Bowen and Imogene Graham. Miss Graham indicates a disdain for the shallow young men that she has met and is highly attracted to the urbane, intelligent Mr. Colville. Mrs. Bowen invites Colville to become a regular guest in her home, and for a time the little coterie is delightfully congenial, but then an emotional triangle begins to develop. Imogene seems to be too devoted to this older gentleman, and Colville does not discourage her. Mrs. Bowen, who apparently is captivated by his charm as well, begins to feel overshadowed by her lovely young ward. This is the core of the intriguing plot.<br><br>Howells’ characters are totally believable in their thoughts, their motivations, their words, and their actions. The dialogue is delightful, both in the lighter conversations and in the more passionate speeches. Aided by the social milieu of expatriates in a historic city of art and culture, the story moves at first slowly and pleasantly, but begins to build inexorably toward an emotional crisis. As the whole plot unwinds before us, we can eventually see that there is really no other way that the events could realistically move. This novel is a very engrossing and satisfying tale of people that we become truly interested in. ( Summary by Leonard Wilson )

8Christmas Every Day and Other Stories Told for Children

By William Dean Howells

Five short delightful stories for children, told in the voice of "the papa" to "the girl" and "the boy" William Dean Howells (March 1, 1837 – May 11, 1920) was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own prolific writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of Silas Lapham. (Reader’s Note for story 3: A pony engine is a small locomotive for switching cars from one track to another.) (Summary by Wikipedia and David Wales)

9Coast of Bohemia

By William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells is at his iconoclastic best in this exploration of bourgeois values, particularly in the clash between respectable society and the dubious bohemian world of Art and Poetry. Cornelia Saunders has everything going for her in her middle-class world: comfort, good looks, attentive young men. She seems willing to risk it all for the sake of what might be an artistic Gift, venturing with great trepidation to put her foot over the line into Bohemia to see if it might be the thing for her. Skewering the conventions of sentimental literature as usual, Howells keeps the reader guessing to the end as to the fate of Cornelia and her Gift. - Summary by Expatriate

10Indian Summer (version 2)

By William Dean Howells

Set in Florence's Anglo-American colony in the late 19th century, this is a romantic story of a middle-aged man, returning to the scene of his first but disappointed love twenty years earlier. The doings of Americans abroad were staples of the fictions of Henry James and Edith Wharton, but Howells’s view is rather different. As John Updike has said of it, “the felicity of the writing makes us pause in admiration…. A midlife crisis has rarely been sketched in fiction with better humor, with gentler comedy and more gracious acceptance of life’s irrevocability.” ( Nicholas Clifford)

11Hazard of New Fortunes

By William Dean Howells

Howell’s novel is set in New York of the late nineteenth century, a city familiar to readers of Edith Wharton and Henry James. Basil March, a businessman from Boston of a literary bent, moves with his family to New York to edit a new journal founded by an acquaintance. Its financial support, however, comes from a Mr. Dryfoos, a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer suddenly become millionaire by the discovery of natural gas on his property, and now living in New York with his family in a style he hopes will befit his new wealth.<br /> Is it his new fortune that presents a hazard? Or is it the new wealth of New York City in the Gilded Age? Both March and his literary creator are increasingly aware of some of the social and economic contradictions that beset the city of the time (though some of Howell’s analysis sounds as if it well might fit New York today). Characters such as, among others, Dryfoos’s children, a German socialist immigrant who fought for the Union cause, an impoverished Southern colonel still persuaded that a reformed slavery might work, a young woman drawn from the upper reaches of Old New York society, help to enrich the story and its setting with their differing viewpoints. ( Nicholas Clifford)

This two-volume work includes heroines from the works of Eliot, Trollope, Hardy, Harte, Austen, Edgeworth, Scott, Dickens, Hawthorne, E. Bronte, Thackeray, and others. These studies of nineteenth-century literature were by a critical light of the time. (Summary by Jim Locke)

13Traveller from Altruria

By William Dean Howells

Set in the early 1890s, at a fashionable summer resort somewhere on the East Coast of the United States, this book tells the story of Mr. Twelvemough, an author who has been selected to function as host to a visitor from the faraway island of Altruria. The visitor, Mr. Homos, has come all the way to the United States, a country which prides itself on democracy and equality, to experience everyday life in America firsthand, and to see for himself how the principle that "All men are created equal" is being put into practice. Due to Altruria's secluded existence, very little is known about the island, so Twelvemough and his circle of acquaintances, all of whom are staying at the same resort hotel, seem more eager to learn about Altruria than to explain American life and institutions. To their dismay, it becomes gradually clear that the United States is greatly lagging behind Altruria in practically every aspect of life, be it political, economic, cultural or moral. Summary from Wikipedia

14rencontre

By William Dean Howells

Kitty Ellison, orpheline vit avec la famille de son oncle dans l'Etat de New York. En voyage, sur le bateau à vapeur quittant le Québec pour remonter le Saguenay, elle fait la connaissance de l'aristocrate Miles Arbuton de Boston. Il s'éprend de la jeune fille et la demande en mariage. Kitty est consciente de leur différence de milieu, mais accepte sa proposition. Quand des amis aristocrates de Arbuton les rejoignent, celui-ci change de comportement. - Summary by Margot

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and William Dean Howells were friends for 44 years. Their personal and professional relationship is considered by many to be one of the most important in American literature. Howells published his famous "My Mark Twain" in the same year Clemens died, 1910. A few years earlier, Clemens wrote this "remembrance" and "appreciation" of the man who stuck with him through the ups and downs of his long literary journey. (John Greenman)

LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 recordings of Hope by William Dean Howells.<br> This was the Weekly Poetry project for July 7, 2019. <br> ------<br> A short, vivid seafaring poem that holds out hope for an afterlife, wonderfully crafted by William Dean Howells, an American novelist, literary critic, poet and playwright, nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters". He was particularly known for his tenure as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, as well as for his own prolific writings (Summary by Michele Fry and Wikipedia)

17Venetian Life

By William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells was American Consul to Venice for four years. His term ended in 1865. He wrote about the city, and the culture of the Venetians, while there, but finished the book once he had returned to America. This is the second edition, which is expanded slightly, to give more information for tourists. <br> Please be aware that although Howells admires people of the east and Jews, he uses period terms and idioms which modern readers may find offensive. His views of people of African descent may prove offensive to the modern reader. (Summary by Timothy)

18Lady of the Aroostook

By William Dean Howells

Lydia blood is young, beautiful, intelligent and has a wonderful singing voice. She leaves her home in Massachusetts, where she lives with her grandfather and aunt, to travel to Italy to follow her dreams a singing career. On the voyage, she is the only woman, and strikes up friendships with and ignites jealousy among the other passengers. - Summary by LynneT

After the Civil War William Dean Howells served for 15 years as Assistant Editor and then Editor of the prestigious 'Atlantic' Magazine. For the remainder of the 19th Century he was a prolific and respected novelist. 'Years of My Youth' is his remembrance of his early years in Ohio, which he published in 1916 near the end of his life. The book spans the period from his earliest memories until his early 20s, at the beginning of the Civil War. The book is an unusually reflective chronicle that richly portrays the culture and issues of the 1840s and 1850s in the American Midwest. - Summary by Ted Lienhart