Archiv der Kategorie: Classics of Fiction (English)

The Kentons – William Dean Howells

W. D. Howells is quite in his best vein in ‘The Kentons.’ Like all of his work, this possesses that quality which we expect in a classic, but rarely look for and more rarely find in contemporary fiction, of repaying the closest and most minute reading, and it is this fact which seems most surely to guarantee a long life to his books. It is of no use to gallop through Mr. Howells; the habitual gallopers invariably find him dull and wonder what his admirers see in him. The proper way to enjoy him is to have or get a sense of humor, and then to settle down in the most leisurely of moods … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Heroines Of Fiction – William Dean Howells

The numerous class of novel readers who for a lifetime have wandered through the fields of fiction, not premeditatedly seeking mental or moral improvement, but with a mind chiefly on “pleasure bent,” have a treat in store in ‘Heroines of Fiction.’ Mr. Howells does not write of his own heroines of fiction – it is the creations of the English and American novelists of times long ago who have filled an imaginative world with a galaxy of feminine loveliness and charm that he considers. The dear old friends of fiction who have become as real to us, in name and appearance, as if we and they had lived side by side in the … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

A Pair Of Patient Lovers – William Dean Howells

The five stories contained in this volume are “A Pair of Patient Lovers”, “The Pursuit of the Piano”, “A Difficult Case”,” The Magic of a Voice” and “A Circle in the Water”. These are stories of the sort that only Mr. Howells knows how to write.

A Pair Of Patient Lovers.

Format: eBook.

A Pair Of Patient Lovers.

ISBN: 9783849657703

Excerpt from the text:

I.

We first met Glendenning on the Canadian boat which carries you down the rapids of the St. Lawrence from Kingston and leaves you at Montreal. When we saw a handsome young clergyman across the promenade-deck looking up from his guide-book toward us, now and again, … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Literary Friends And Acquaintance – William Dean Howells

Mr. William Dean Howells has written many books of several kinds which have entertained a great many people of all kinds, but no single book of any kind in which his various talents appear to such advantage to themselves and enjoyment of their readers as in his ‘Literary Friends and Acquaintance’, which, briefly described as a personal retrospect of American authorship, is in reality a series of portraits and miniatures of American men, women and, figuratively, in some cases, children of the pen, a gallery of literary likenesses, drawn from life, with a skillful but kindly pencil, and in the light that lingers like a halo around their lessening memories. Mr. Howells … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Their Silver Wedding Journey – William Dean Howells

The story of Mr. W. D. Howells’s ‘Their Silver Wedding Journey’ is ‘Their Wedding Journey’ over again, after an interval of twenty-five years; and a clever and entertaining recital of familiarities it is. It is like looking in the glass to read such a tale, and there are all the sights and sounds of the steamer, too, of the Continent, and of the amiable and happy go-betweens of a lover husband and his wife. Mr. Howells beats his gold out pretty thin, but it is gold all the same; or, to change the figure, the old shapes and colors are here again, but the kaleidoscope has had a shake and the combination … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Ragged Lady – William Dean Howells

The heroine of the ‘Ragged Lady’ is a New England type of young girl – strong, pure, uneducated, loyal, proud; a girl whose head always governs her heart, and whose moral sense permits no confusion in distinguishing right from wrong. She sees and acts, and by her quickness of apprehension causes confusion in the minds of those who differ with her. Into the world, under the care, or rather at the whim, of a vulgar, rich, selfish old woman, this little New England girl, who had never seen a city, goes. Her new life begins, but is never wholly separated from the days of semi-service in a summer hotel. The people of that summer … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Story Of A Play – William Dean Howells

‘The Story of a Play’ is a pleasing addition to the list of the charming trivialities to which Mr. Howells has chiefly devoted himself in the late years of the 19th century. It now seems a confirmed habit with him to select for treatment some closely circumscribed phase of experience, to make it the subject of the most searching and minute observation, and to develop its utmost possibilities. This intensive method of literary cultivation is the method best calculated to yield artistic results ; and, if this work of Mr. Howells does sometimes suggest the carving of cherry-stones, the carving is very neatly done. Few subjects are more hackneyed than that … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

An Open-Eyed Conspiracy – William Dean Howells

‘An Open-Eyed Conspiracy’ is an extremely delightful book, and delightful in a way in which many American writers have long striven, and are still striving to attract, or distract, the attention of their readers, but in which Howells alone can be said to have attained distinction. He represents an element in the character of his countrymen, literary and otherwise, which may be roughly described as a sleepless sense of humor, which expends itself in some minds in large exaggerations of thought and speech, in others in the invention of tumultuous incidents and the horseplay of practical jokes, and in others in the exploitation of dialects, Eastern, Western, Southern, which never obtained anywhere, the … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Landlord At Lion’s Head – William Dean Howells

In ‘The Landlord at Lion’s Head’ Mr. Howells has returned to the New England which he knows so well. Indeed, his absolute intimacy with the life there, his vivid power of reproducing it, contradicts Mr. Henry James’ opinion that the literary artist should write only of the impressions received in childhood and early youth. When Mr. Howells became familiar with New England he was a man of nearly thirty. But he had sprung from New England stock, and be fitted into the life of Boston as if he had always belonged to it. Perhaps his early years in Ohio enabled him to see New England with a clearer vision than he … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Stories Of Ohio – William Dean Howells

Mr. Howells has in the present volume given his writings the form of a series of historical stories, in which his native State is described and pictured from as remote a period as the geologic ice age. The slow-moving glaciers in the distant past covered most of the present State of Ohio. They rounded off the corners of her hills, smoothed the contour of her valleys, left glacial scratches on her rocks, and transported boulders from remote points where they had an origin and left them on the various glacial moraines. After the ice age came a strange and mysterious people who left traces of their one-time existence in the shape of curious … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...