William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes

Michael Anesko (Penn State University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1890

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

With this novel, published in 1890, William Dean Howells (1837-1920) at last answered the call of his own campaign for literary realism in American letters. For years he had used his editorial powers at the Atlantic and Harper’s to promote realist theory and technique and to advocate on behalf of novelists who shared his dedication to the “simple and truthful treatment of material”. While his other fictions of the 1880s were all the while building in this direction – from The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) to The Minister’s Charge (1886) and Annie Kilburn (1889) – A Hazard of New Fortunes offered Howells the largest social arena in which to translate his theories into practice. The …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

908 words

Citation: Anesko, Michael. "A Hazard of New Fortunes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 March 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7147, accessed 21 November 2024.]

Save this article