Archiv der Kategorie: Classics of Fiction (English)

Stops Of Various Quills – William Dean Howells

‘Stops of Various Quills’ is a remarkable book, concerning which there will probably be considerable difference of opinion among readers of current verse, though there ought to be none, and will be none among those who are capable of looking beyond and below mere poetic technique into the thing which is poetry itself – the thought which is in the poet’s mind, the feeling which is in his heart, and which, whether he has captured it in his verse, or whether it has evaded him, is individual, vital, inevitable. Mr. Howells has given us here a remarkable book, as we have said, and one which we would select as an infallible touchstone … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

My Literary Passions – William Dean Howells

The sort of autobiography of which ‘My Literary Passions’ is an example is always interesting. Mr. Howells is by no means the first to write upon the theme of “Books Which Have Influenced Me”, but we do not just now think of anyone before him who has made it the subject of a whole volume. Mr. Howells has had many “literary passions”- fifty, or thereabouts, to reckon only from the chapter headings-and in not a few cases it is obvious that he has loved not wisely, but too well. What we particularly like about the book, aside from the unfailing charm of its manner, is the frankly subjective character of the record. Mr. … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

A Traveler From Altruria – William Dean Howells

Mr. Howells’s ‘A Traveler from Altruria’ recounts only his social apostle’s acts and experiences at a summer hotel in a mountain village of New England, and includes none of the epistles upon the World’s Fair and the life of New York that his chronicler has recently sent to him through a magazine. The author calls the book a romance, but its form is a thinly disguised and somewhat acrid tract for the times, marked in the narrative passages by the colloquialisms that now please Mr. Howells. Designedly unindividual, the village, the hotel and some of their characters are broadly typical of their kind. Other characters are only voices. From a remarkably observant … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Coast Of Bohemia – William Dean Howells

Mr. Howells has always had a pretty taste in titles, and ‘The Coast of Bohemia’, by its name alone, brings pleasurable anticipations. Nor are they doomed to disappointment in this instance, for the story is pleasing in all its aspects. The Bohemia upon whose coasts it bids us linger is the somewhat sophisticated and denationalized Bohemia of the New York art schools and studios ; the flavor of its life is very different from that of the enchanted region which Murger opened for us, but its ways are engaging if decorous, and its denizens are very much alive while not too much in earnest. We do not discover among them any of … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Christmas Every Day (And Other Stories) – William Dean Howells

There is rare fun and freshness in Mr. W. D. Howells’s. ‘Christmas Every Day, and Other Stories’, a little volume charming for New Year or Thanksgiving. It is redolent, indeed, of all these, especially of November sweets, when turkey and cranberry sauce crown the board and pumpkin-pies smile saucily from its end. Mr. Howells shows in these tales an unexpected tenderness lurking in a corner of his capacious heart –a tenderness for children under a veil of humor that is particularly attractive and also a grotesque yet merry fancy which cannot fail to delight them. What a delightful world is the child’s world and how few there be that enter … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

My Year In A Log Cabin – William Dean Howells

Mr. Howells’ father, who was a Welshman, moved to a property on the Little Miami River in southern Ohio to take charge of a sawmill and gristmill and superintend their transformation into paper-mills. Mr. Howells describes a year of this life in a half-settled country, and tells how perfectly happy he was in his home-life and how intensely he suffered from homesickness when obliged to leave his mother to help earn money for a large family. Somehow or other, when Mr. Howells writes ff his boyhood, there is always a tinge of sadness about him. With his love for the comrades of his youth there breathe, as it were, notes … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The World Of Chance – William Dean Howells

In ‘A Hazard of New Fortunes’ Mr. Howells took for his hero the editor of a New York magazine. In ‘The World of Chance’ the leading character is a young journalist of Midland, a town indefinitely located a day’s journey west of New York City. He goes to the metropolis with the manuscript of his first novel, “A Modern Romeo,” in his pocket. The adventures of this manuscript, making its way from publisher to publisher, and finally returning to the first one, who had wished to publish it despite the adverse opinions expressed by all his “readers,” are of extreme interest. The book is finally issued by Mr. Brandreth, of the Chapley … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

A Little Swiss Sojourn – William Dean Howells

‘A Little Swiss Sojourn’ was passed in the village of Villeneuve in the canton of Vaud, where a comfortable pension, vineyards galore, a gothic chapel, the placid lake, the snow-covered Alps, an occasional château (to let, furnished, for $500 a year) lent charm, dignity and ample opportunity for reminiscence to the visit of three months of which this narrative records the impressions. It is a pretty picture of an alien civilization, having certain quaint analogies with our own hard-favored rural New England, which Mr. Howells sets forth with characteristic appreciation.

A Little Swiss Sojourn.

Format: eBook.

A Little Swiss Sojourn.

ISBN: 9783849657550

Excerpt from the text:

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Out of eighty … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Quality Of Mercy – William Dean Howells

Mr. Howells has this time chosen a subject for illustration which affords plenty of ground for serious thinking. He has written a story of defalcation; the too familiar story of the treasurer of a rich corporation who, himself rich, is greedy for more money; who first uses the funds at his disposal for personal ends; pays them back; uses them again and cannot pay them back; falsifies the books and so gains time to steal more; is at last found out, and b ing given three days to make restitution, finds himself called upon to choose between suicide, surrender, or flight to Canada. It cannot be said that there is anything new … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Criticism And Fiction – William Dean Howells

In ‘Criticism and Fiction’ Mr. Howells gives his ideas of the proper functions of critics, and the lines along which he may be supposed to have written his novels . He considers criticism an entirely contemplative branch of literature; finding in it, seemingly, no creative potentialities . The critic, he thinks, should first consider what the author has tried to do, then examine how he has done it . As to whether or not the thing was worth doing that concerns the author, not the critic. The critic need not say whether the book is good or bad; for, in the first place, it is none of his business; in the second, he … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...