William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life

"I found this book hard to put down. Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson have written a highly readable, thoroughly researched, and well-balanced life of a major literary figure. Howells really comes alive for us in these pages."—Robert Richardson, Jr., author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire and Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind

"Behind the public image of the this man of letters, Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson have shown William Dean Howells to have been a complicated and painfully honest man in an era of political corruption, industrial greed, and American imperialism. This biography is a major accomplishment, massive in scope and engaging in its narrative. A terrific read."—Jerome Loving, author of The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser and Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself

"William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life will be one of the most important literary biographies in years."—Linda Wagner-Martin, author of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman's Life

Susan Goodman, Professor of English and H. Fletcher Brown Chair of Humanities at the University of Delaware, is author of Civil Wars: American Novelists and Manners, 1880-1940 (2003) and Ellen Glasgow: A Biography (2003), among other books. Carl Dawson, Professor of English at the University of Delaware, is author of Living Backwards: A Transatlantic Memoir (1995), Lafcadio Hearn and the Vision of Japan (1992), and other books.