Archiv der Kategorie: Classics of Fiction (English)

Annie Kilburn – William Dean Howells

Mr. Howells’ novel exhibits the influence of many disturbing elements upon the mind of the writer. What they call the “zeitgeist” in Germany is strongly reflected in the pages of “Annie Kilburn;” and the lenses through which current social phenomena are viewed are not those of optimism. The heroine is a not quite young woman, who, after a long residence abroad, returns orphaned to her old home. This is a New England manufacturing town in a transition state between colonial Puritanism and nobody knows what. Annie Kilburn stands for that peculiarly modern condition of mind in which dissatisfaction with social relations as they exist is rather paralyzed than tempered by the operation of a … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

April Hopes – William Dean Howells

Mr. Howells shows a light and exquisite touch in “April Hopes,” a novel, it is safe to say, in which all his finer qualities are seen at their best. The sweetness of it is perhaps a trifle cloying now and then to robust palates, but the story is for all the world like a spring day where showers and sunshine grace fully intermingle. Story, we say, while in reality there is no story at all, in accordance with Mr. Howells’ views of the lack of stories in “real” life. Only an account of how two young things fell in love with one another and quarreled and made up, and quarreled again, and made up … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Modern Italian Poets – William Dean Howells

How many of the intelligent play-goers of this intelligent land and of the present period could tell, without the play-bills in their hands, that Alfieri was the creator of Ristori’s “Mirra” and of Salvini’s “Saul” ? How many of the general readers of English verse know who Alfieri was or what he did ? And yet Vittorio Alfieri is the most familiar figure among the score of ‘Modern Italian Poets’ upon whom Mr. Howells dwells in his volume of Essays and Versions. Tommaso Grossi, Giacomo Leopardi, Giuseppe Giusti, Aleardo Aleardi, and their contemporaries, who flourished in Italy between the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the last quarter of this, mean as … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Minister’s Charge – William Dean Howells

With ‘The Minister’s Charge’ Mr. Howells has reached the point where his books are less interesting individually than as parts of a series, and one has the satisfaction with these later works of being able to read them by the light of the author’s own canons of criticism. These show that Mr. Howells cannot only preach a philosophy, but live up to it ; for the story of Lemuel Barker, so far as it is told, has the ” respect for probability, the fidelity to conditions, human and social, which,” he has told us, ” can alone justify the reading and writing of novels.” We say, “so far as it is told,” for … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Indian Summer – William Dean Howells

Mr. Howells is giving us in ‘ Indian Summer’ some of the very best work he has ever done ; full of the same dainty piquantness, but alive with deeper sympathies and meanings. This is full, not merely of what average people say and do, but of what average people think and feel behind what they say and do. The difference between ‘Silas Lapham’ and ‘Indian Summer’ is like the difference between a pearl and an opal : the opal has a soul. Nothing could be more entertaining than the letter of Mrs. Bowen as a perfect illustration of a poor woman trying to be just, but unconsciously adding a touch to make it … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...