LITMIR.BIZ

The question of the identity of 'A Boy's Town', has excited almost as much interest, in a certain section of our country, as the long-discussed question of the birthplace of Homer. That Mr. Howells is his own Boy there can be no doubt. But Mr. Howells, according to the biographies, was born at Martin's Ferry in 1837. The family moved to Hamilton when he was three years of age, to Dayton when he was nine, and to Columbus—probably the scene of the opening chapters of «The Shadow of a Dream»—when he was fourteen. Each of these Western cities now claims the honor of being immortalized by the Boy, although the Dayton Herald declared, that if Dayton was pictured it was Dayton with a halo of poetry about it; not the commonplace Dayton which the unimaginative citizen of Dayton now beholds. Wherever the Town maybe, and whoever may be the Boy, the tale is one which will appeal to all the boys of all the towns in the land, notwithstanding the curious fact that the Boy does not seem to be called «Tom» – a name to which all the best boys in all the standard boys' books of the present day invariably answer, from Tom Brown of Rugby and Oxford, in England, to Tom Bailey of Rivermouth, in New Hampshire, and to Tom Sawyer of Hannibal, in Missouri. Mr. Howells' Boy, whose name is not mentioned at all, was quite as much of a boy as any of these – a thorough boy, from the top of his bare head to the soles of his bare feet—"a Boy from Boy Town"—and every grown-up boy among his readers will find some one of his own peculiar characteristics, and many of his own particular tastes, embodied in this Boy of Mr. Howells', and will wonder how Mr. Howells found him out.

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"A Woman's Reason" is certainly one of the most ambitious novels Mr. Howells has written, not merely because it is so long, but because the author has reached out for effects which he neglected in his earlier books. It is not a radical departure from his established methods, but it indicates a larger and broader conception of the scope, the opportunities, and the resources of his art. The story of Helen Harkness's struggles has an enduring claim upon every reader's sympathy, the incidents of the book are spirited, and the movement is alert, vigorous, and at times highly dramatic in its surprises and suspended interest. The author is so loyal to his heroine that she is rarely permitted to disappear from the scene, but such constancy denotes a steadfastness of purpose and leads to a concentration of interest; this method is always artistic if it can be sustained without becoming tiresome, and there are few para graphs in «A Woman's Reason» which even one who reads for the story alone will care to skip. The keynote is sounded within the first few pages, but the revelation of the motive does not clog the interest of development, and the intelligent reader is the more gratified because the author has paid him the compliment of taking him into his confidence. The story is that of a Boston girl who has been reared without any thought of possible necessity for self-support, is left almost penniless at the death of her father, and surrenders voluntarily the small remnant of the paternal estate to which she had a perfect legal title in order to satisfy her own high sense of principle. She refuses to be de pendent upon friends, and she is separated from her sweetheart by a misunderstanding for which she was to blame. These are conditions which could be made heartrending or sensational, according to the treatment there of; Mr. Howells has the delicate art of making them interesting and sympathetic without straining the probabilities or exciting morbid sentiment.

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To meet Mr. Howells again on his Italian rambles is like rejoining an old friend in the midst of scenes associated with the beginning of our friendship. This rich volume is a grateful recollection of the book which first gave him a place in our standard literature. Much of the old charm of 'Venetian Life' is certainly here. The daring disregard of conventionality, the happy discovery of aspects of life un noticed by previous travelers, the artistic and novel use of illustrative side-lights, the quick insight into the characteristics of places, the unforced flow of delicate humor, the fascination of a style distinguished more by natural grace than by laborious polish, and the genial understanding between the author and the reader – all these qualities reappear in the new record of travel ; and if they seem less striking than they did of old, we must remember that Mr. Howells himself is no longer a fresh sensation but a familiar favorite. Half the volume is devoted to Florence under the title of Florentine Mosaics. Mr. Howells gives us something quite unlike the ordinary impressions of a traveler. Here is neither set description of scenery and architecture, nor systematic study of life and manners ; but the author passes at will from pictures of the streets and squares and churches and palaces, to brief comments upon the people, and glowing transcriptions of dramatic episodes in Florentine history. . . . Siena is visited in the same temper, although Mr. Howells took his pleasure there with a keener zest than the well-known sights of Florence were able to afford him ; and the tour took in Pisa, Lucca, Pistoja, Prato and Fiesole, of which he writes much more briefly than of the more important cities.

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This volume includes the following stories by William Dean Howells: «A Day's Pleasure», «Buying a Horse», «Flitting», «The Mouse» and «A Year in a Venetian Palace.»

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In this volume Mr. Howells has collected three short pieces which show his power under various aspects. The pleasantest and in a literary sense the best of the three is the charming paper on 'Lexington,' originally contributed to Longman's Magazine. It is distinguished by that happy faculty of description, that sure artistic eye, and that genial spirit which constitute so much of the fascination of his larger works; flashes of characteristic humor surprise us in its delicate pages; and it has all that strong individual flavor which makes the best writing of Mr. Howells so different from the rest of the good writing which is getting to be abundant in books. The second village in his collection is the Shaker settlement of 'Shirley.' If Lexington was a theme for a dainty literary exercise, Shirley served him rather for a plain and sympathetic account of a community which he seems to have regarded with a tender interest. The quiet and simple tone of the paper is in perfect accord with the life it portrays. The story of the Moravian Indian settlement of 'Gnadenhütten,' on the Muskingum, and the brutal massacre by which the white frontiersmen blotted it out in 1782, is vigorously told in the last chapter of the book, where Mr. Howells shows his skill in tragic narrative rather than description.

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This work of Mr. Howells is similar in lightness of material and delicacy of workman ship to «A Fearful Responsibility» and other minor productions of his deft hand which hold a unique and ill-defined position between the novel and the short story. It is brief; it is free from the mysteries of a plot; it is perfectly simple in plan; and the characters are not elaborated, but rather sketched with a few strong touches, so quick and free that we hardly appreciate the excellence of the art until we close the book and find how its principal personages haunt the memory. In its motive, however, «Dr. Breen's Practice» rises distinctly above the tales with which the ordinary reader will be likely to compare it, and approaches the intellectual level of «The Undiscovered Country.» Like that master- work, it deals with a serious phase of mental experience, somewhat out of the common, and yet not so remote from our daily life as to seem unreal; and it analyzes perplexity and passion, a little melancholy and a little grotesque, with a mingling of sympathy and gentle humor that is wholly inimitable. Doctor Breen is a young lady – a young lady with no extravagant ideas about what is called the cause of woman, but with a certain morbid, self-questioning sense of duty, under the strain of which she has devoted herself to a career she does not love. "At the end of the ends she was a Puritan; belated, misdated, if the reader will, and cast upon good works for the consolation which the Puritans formerly found in a creed. Riches and ease were sinful to her, and somehow to be atoned for; and she had no real love for anything that was not of an immediate humane and spiritual effect. " Miss Breen breaks down forever under her first patient, discovering what the reader has seen from the start, that she lacks the mental and spiritual aptitude for her self-imposed task. There is a deep pathos in this sudden and utter defeat, relieved a little but not obscured by an elusive flavor of comedy which pervades the narrative. It does not impress us long; for Mr. Howells does poetical justice to his heroine at the end, and winds up the little tale of trouble with a charming and dainty eclaircissement. Grace Breen is one of the most lovable of his creations. She carries our hearts as surely as the Lady of the Aroostook; and not less admirably than that exquisite heroine does she illustrate the keen insight into feminine character, and the poetic perception of feminine ways which delight us in all Mr. Howells's stories.

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"A Modern Instance" is among the most vigorous performances that Mr. Howells has given to the public. The fine humor of his previous writings is here; the descriptive power, which with a few words enables us to understand the visible surroundings of the characters, the close reading of character, analyzing without seeming to do so, and all that. But the book is a deeper one than most that Mr. Howells has written, not merely because it treats of a subject that has an element of the tragic in it, but because it treats a more important theme than has yet engaged its author's attention, in a manner commensurate with its importance, and in a manner which leaves the reader with the impression that the theme has been discussed for all that it is artistically and morally worth. This story, like others that have proceeded from the same pen, is a study of certain characteristic phases of American, or rather New England, life—for Mr. Howells appears to be under the impression that there is a certain flavor—savory or unsavory— about New England life which is not to be found elsewhere, or at least nowhere else in the same intensity. The hero of «A Modern Instance» is one of those smart fellows whose smartness from the first takes quite a positive bend in the direction of scampishness. We all know of such, and the essentials of Mr. Howells' careful characterization refer themselves easily to many examples in real life. But while Bartley Hubbard is a type, he is also a distinct individuality, and the tragedy of «A Modern Instance» comes from mating his conscienceless and superficial smartness with the limited intelligence, Puritanical bringing-up, imperfect culture, and strong affections of a girl who is as much a typical New Englander as any of the smart young women who have done so much duty as representative Americans in the writings of Mr. Howells and Mr. James. There is nothing better in Mr. Howells' book than the glimpse that is given at the family surroundings of Marcia, and an Indiana divorce court is the legitimate winding-up of the mating of such a woman with such a man as Bartley Hubbard. The smart fellow literally wears out the patience of his not at all smart wife—wrecking her life just as he wrecks his own moral and physical natures. The moral of such a story is obvious, and Mr. Howells might have satisfied every requirement of artistic propriety by permitting it to point itself. He has not, however, found it possible to let go of his subject without a bit of sermonizing, which is very excellent in its particular way, but which adds nothing to the impressiveness of the narrative.

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In «The Undiscovered Country», Mr. Howells appears in a new phase, and adds somewhat of the definite moral purpose of the teacher to the grace and finish of the literary artist. From the opening of the first chapter it is evident that the author has this time a further object in mind than the mere portrayal of character. Half-page monologues and whole-page conversations on matters of speculative inquiry are not altogether in the line of Mr. Howell's genius, which has always disclosed more of the artist than of the moralist; the lesson of his literary work being in its perfection and its correspondence to truth, rather than in any serious intent or design which serves as an appendage to the artistic motive. Happily, in «The Undiscovered Country» the author does not pursue his object in that dead-in-earnest style which so commonly tends to overthrow the mental equipoise of a writer and dull his finer perceptions; – happily, that is, so far as the artistic results of his works are concerned, though otherwise, one cannot help thinking, as regards the actual gain accomplished in the elucidation of a very difficult subject. The title of Mr. Howells's book is both ingenious and suggestive. «The Undiscovered Country» remains undiscovered to the last; and the fact that no way of its discovery is found but that of the solitary exploration of death, proves of valuable service to the author, supplying the element of mystery which throws a poetic glamour over the subject he is treating, while it compels no self-betrayal to any opinion or theory, and at the end leads him to revert to the homelier scenes and occupations of practical life for the solution, not of his problem, but of his heroine's happiness and well-being.

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At the time when Mr. Howells's novel, «The Lady of the Aroostook», was published, it was regarded as an antidote to some recent poisons. It is its patriotic and chivalrous purpose to rescue the American woman from the aspersions from which she had suffered in one or two quarters before, and to show of what fine stuff she is really made. Very original materials have been chosen with which to work out this idea, and the result is a fresh, vivacious, elevated story, in which real novelty of conception is combined with all the other fine qualities which have given Mr. Howells his easy distinction among writers of fiction. But the «Aroostook» is a ship, and not the remote county of Maine of that name; and the events of the story take place upon her deck and in her cabin during a voyage from Boston to the Mediterranean. We will not spoil the book for the reader by describing its plan in detail. We will only add here that in it Mr. Howells seems to have written with a pen of broader moral nib, so to speak, than usual; a high and generous purpose taking the lead of a mere technical skill. The character of the story's obvious motive, and the strong and steady hand with which it is carried out, give «The Lady of the Aroostook» a foremost place among the works of this author.

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"Out of the Question" is an amusing trifle, with just a thread of a plot, about the love of a young society girl for a brave young fellow without any social position other than his brains has gained him; the idea of marriage with him is scouted by herself and friends at first as quite «out of the question.» The charm of the story is in the piquant way in which it is handled, and in its bright, clever dialogue.

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