William Dean Howells was an influential American author and literary critic born in 1837 in Ohio. He worked as a printer's apprentice in his youth before becoming a journalist. Howells befriended many prominent American authors and was later appointed editor of the Atlantic Monthly from 1871 to 1881. As editor, he advocated for literary realism and championed many American realist authors. Howells published several realist novels of his own and was considered the "Dean of American Letters." He spent his later years dividing time between homes in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Maine, where he died in 1920 at the age of 83.

1. William Dean Howells.
Born March 1, 1837
Martins Ferry (then Martinsville), Ohio, U.S.
Died May 11, 1920 (aged 83)
Biography
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.
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 and Mary Dean Howells. He was the second of eight children. His father was a
newspaper editor and printer, who moved frequently around Ohio. In 1840, the family settled in
Hamilton, Ohio, where William Cooper Howells oversaw a Whig newspaper and followed
Swedenborgianism; their nine years there marked the longest they would stay in one place. Though the
family had to live frugally, the young Howells was encouraged by his parents in his literary interests.
Howells began to help his father with typesetting and printing work at an early age, a job known at the
time as a printer's devil. In 1852, his father arranged to have one of Howells' poems published in the
Ohio State Journal without telling him.
Early career
In 1856, Howells was elected as a clerk in the State House of Representatives. In 1858 he began to work
at the Ohio State Journal where he wrote poetry, short stories, and also translated pieces from French,
Spanish, and German. He studied avidly German and other languages and was greatly interested in
Heinrich Heine. In 1860 he visited Boston and met with other American writers James Thomas Fields,
James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and became a personal friend to many, including Henry Adams, William James,
Henry James and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr..The William Dean Howells House in Cambridge, MA was
designed by his wife Elinor Mead, and was occupied by Howells and his family from 1873 to 1878.Said to
have been rewarded for an official biography of Abraham Lincoln used during the election of 1860, he
gained a consulship in Venice. On Christmas Eve 1862, at the American embassy in Paris, he married
Elinor Mead, a sister of the sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Mead and the architect William Rutherford Mead,
the Mead of McKim, Mead, and White. Among their children was the future architect John Mead
Howells.
Editorship and other literary pursuits
Upon returning to America in 1865 and settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Howells wrote for various
magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine. In January 1866 James Fields offered

2. him a position as assistant editor at the Atlantic Monthly, which Howells accepted after successfully
negotiating for a higher salary, though he was frustrated by Fields's close supervision. After five years,
in 1871 Howells was made editor, and remained in this position until 1881. In 1869 he first met Mark
Twain, which began a longtime friendship. But more important for the development of his literary
style—his advocacy of Realism—was his relationship with the journalist Jonathan Baxter Harrison, who
during the 1870s wrote a series of articles for the Atlantic Monthly on the lives of ordinary Americans
(Fryckstedt 1958). Howells gave a series of twelve lectures on "Italian Poets of Our Century" for the
Lowell Institute during its 1870-71 season.He had published his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in
1872, but his literary reputation soared with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882,
which described the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham became his best
known, 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 (1890),
and An Imperative Duty (1892). He was particularly outraged by the trials resulting from the Haymarket
Riot.His poems were collected in 1873 and 1886, and a volume under the title Stops of Various Quills
was published in 1895. He was the initiator of the school of American realists who derived, through the
Russians, from Balzac and had little sympathy with any other type of fiction, although he frequently
encouraged new writers in whom he discovered new ideas.
Later years
In 1902, Howells published The Flight of Pony Baker, a book for children partly inspired by his own
childhood. That same year, he bought a summer home overlooking the Piscataqua River in Kittery Point,
Maine. He returned there annually until his death two decades later, when his son donated the property
to Harvard University as a memorial. 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. 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". Howells and his daughter Mildred decided to spend part of the year in their
Cambridge home on Concord Avenue though, without Elinor, they found it "dreadful in its ghostliness
and ghastliness".Howells died in his sleep shortly after midnight on May 11, 1920, and was buried in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Eight years later his daughter published his correspondence as a biography
of his literary life.
Literary theory
In addition to his own creative works, Howells also wrote criticism, and essays about contemporary
literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, Giovanni Verga, Benito Pérez Galdós, and, especially,
Leo Tolstoy, which helped establish their reputations in the United States. He also wrote critically in
support of American writers Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Emily Dickinson, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman,
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles W. Chesnutt, Abraham Cahan, Madison Cawein,and
Frank Norris. It is perhaps in this role that he had his greatest influence. In his "Editor's Study" column at
the Atlantic Monthly and, later, at Harper's, he formulated and disseminated his theories of "realism" in
literature.Howells viewed realism as "nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of
material."In defense of the real, as opposed to the ideal, he wrote, "I hope the time is coming when not
only the artist, but the common, average man, who always 'has the standard of the arts in his power,'
will have also the courage to apply it, and will reject the ideal grasshopper wherever he finds it, in
science, in literature, in art, because it is not 'simple, natural, and honest,' because it is not like a real

3. grasshopper. But I will own that I think the time is yet far off, and that the people who have been
brought up on the ideal grasshopper, the heroic grasshopper, the impassioned grasshopper, the self-
devoted, adventureful, good old romantic card-board grasshopper, must die out before the simple,
honest, and natural grasshopper can have a fair field."Howells believed the future of American writing
was not in poetry but in novels, a form which he saw
shifting from "romance" to a serious form.
BRET HARTE
This article is about the American author. For the professional wrestler, see Bret Hart. For other uses,
see Bret Harte (disambiguation). Portrait of Bret Harte - oil painting by John Pettie (1884) Francis Bret
Harte (August 25, 1836 – May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his
accounts of pioneering life in California.
Life and career
He was born in Albany, New York, on August 25, 1836.[3] He was named Francis Brett Hart after his
great-grandfather Francis Brett. When he was young his father, Henry, changed the spelling of the
family name from Hart to Harte. Henry's father--Bret's grandfather--was Bernard Hart, an Orthodox
Jewish immigrant who flourished as a merchant, becoming one of the founders of the The New York
Stock Exchange. Later, Francis preferred to be known by his middle name, but he spelled it with only one

4. "t", becoming Bret Harte.An avid reader as a boy, Harte published his first work at age 11, a satirical
poem titled "Autumn Musings," now lost. His formal schooling ended when he was 13 in 1849. He
moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher,
messenger, and journalist. He spent part of his life in the northern California coastal town of Union (now
known as Arcata), a settlement on Humboldt Bay that was established as a provisioning center for
mining camps in the interior. The 1860 massacre of between 80 and 200 Wiyots killed at the village of
Tutulwat was well documented historically and was reported in San Francisco and New York by Harte.
When serving as assistant editor for the Northern Californian, Harte editorialized about the slayings
while his boss, Stephen G. Whipple, was temporarily absent, leaving Harte in charge of the paper. Harte
published a detailed account condemning the event, writing, "a more shocking and revolting spectacle
never was exhibited to the eyes of a Christian and civilized people. Old women wrinkled and decrepit lay
weltering in blood, their brains dashed out and dabbled with their long grey hair. Infants scarcely a span
long, with their faces cloven with hatchets and their bodies ghastly with wounds." After he published
the editorial, his life was threatened and he was forced to flee one month later. Harte quit his job and
moved to San Francisco, where an anonymous letter published in a city paper is attributed to him,
describing widespread community approval of the massacre. In addition, no one was ever brought to
trial, despite the evidence of a planned attack and references to specific individuals, including a rancher
named Larabee and other members of the unofficial militia called the Humboldt Volunteers. Harte
married Anna Griswold on August 11, 1862, in San Rafael, California. From the start, the marriage was
rocky. Some suggested she was handicapped by extreme jealousy while an early biographer of Harte,
Henry C. Merwin, privately concluded that she was "almost impossible to live with". Bret Harte in
1868.His first literary efforts, including poetry and prose, appeared in The Californian, an early literary
journal edited by Charles Henry Webb. In 1868 he became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new
literary magazine, but this one more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. His
story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp", appeared in the magazine's second issue, propelling Harte to
nationwide fame.When word of Charles Dickens's death reached Bret Harte in July 1870, he
immediately sent a dispatch across the bay to San Francisco to hold back the forthcoming publication of
his Overland Monthly for twenty-four hours, so that he could compose the poetic tribute, "Dickens in
Camp". This work is considered by many of Harte's admirers as his verse masterpiece, for its evident
sincerity, the depth of feeling it displays, and the unusual quality of its poetic expression.Determined to
pursue his literary career, in 1871 he and his family traveled back East, to New York and eventually to
Boston, where he contracted with the publisher of The Atlantic Monthly for an annual salary of $10,000,
"an unprecedented sum at the time." His popularity waned, however, and by the end of 1872 he was
without a publishing contract and increasingly desperate. He spent the next few years struggling to
publish new work (or republish old), delivering lectures about the gold rush, and even selling an
advertising jingle to a soap company.In 1878 Harte was appointed to the position of United States
Consul in the town of Krefeld, Germany and then to Glasgow in 1880. In 1885 he settled in London.
During the twenty-four years he spent in Europe, he never abandoned writing, and maintained a
prodigious output of stories that retained the
freshness of his earlier work. He died in Camberley, England in 1902 of throat cancer and is buried at
Frimley. His wife, by then known as Anna Bret Harte, died on August 2, 1920. Despite being married for
nearly forty years, the couple lived together for only sixteen of those years.

5. BRET HARTE.