William Dean Howells  (1837-1920)

   Born in the midwest, he nonethless became one of the most popular among the literary spokespeople of the Northeast.

   Very soon I'll be adding other photos, a biographical sketch and a clickable list of materials so that you can read his work to your heart's delight. For example, he wrote a sketch about walking through New York's east side, an image which you can compare with Abraham Cahan's image of New York.

   In one of his early works, Their Wedding Journey, he vividly sketches the streets of New York from the eyes of two adventuring newly-weds from Boston:

   At that early hour there were not many people astir on the wide avenue down which our friends strolled when they left the station; but in the aspect of those they saw there was something that told of a greater heat than they had yet known in Boston, and they were sensible of having reached a more southern latitude. The air, though freshened by the over-night's storm, still wanted the briskness and sparkle and pungency of the Boston air, which is as delicious in summer as it is terrible in winter; and the faces that showed themselves were sodden from the yesterday's heat and perspiration. A corner-grocer, seated in a sort of fierce despondency upon a keg near his shop door, had lightly equipped himself for the struggle of the day in the battered armor of the day before, and in a pair of roomy pantaloons, and a baggy shirt of neutral tint-perhaps he had made a vow not to change it whilst the siege of the hot weather lasted-now confronted the advancing sunlight, before which the long shadows of the buildings were slowly retiring. A marketing mother of a family paused at a provision-store, and looking weakly in at the white-aproned butcher among his meats and flies, passed without an effort to purchase. Hurried and wearied shop-girls tripped by in the draperies that betrayed boarding-house door issued briskly one of those cool young New-Yorkers whom no circumstances can oppress: breezy-coated, white-linened, clean, with a good cigar in the mouth, a light cane caught upon the elbow of one of the arms holding up the paper from which the morning's news is snatched, whilst the person sways lightly with the walk; in the street-cars that slowly tinkled up and down were rows of people with baskets between their legs and papers before their faces; and all showed by some peculiarity of air or dress the excess of heat which they had already borne, and to which they seemed to look forward, and gave by the scantiness of their number a vivid impression of the uncounted thousands within doors prolonging, before the day's terror began, the oblivion of sleep.

"Nineteenth-century Regional Writing in the United States" is the work of Dottie Webb. For suggestions, complaints, cattle-rustling schemes or gossiping over the fence in neighborly fashion, send your e-correspondence to drdotwebb@traverse.net

URL: http://www.traverse.com/people/dot/howells.html