Gore Vidal on Howells (1992)

From the New York Review of Books:


Writing was simply a trade that, sometimes, mysteriously, proved to be an art. William Dean Howells had balanced commerce and art with such exquisite tact that he was invaluable as editor and friend to both the Paleface Henry James and the Redskin Mark Twain. Howells himself was a very fine novelist. But he lived too long. For the rising generation of the new twentieth century, he was too genteel, too optimistic (they had carelessly misread him); too much Beacon Street not to mention London and Paris and the Russia of Dostoevsky, whose first translations Howells had brought to the attention of those very conventional ladies who were thought to be the principal audience for the novel in America.

W. D. Howells, 4 March 1837-11 May 1920

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From Playbill, http://www.playbill.com/news/article/69486-PLAYBILL-VAULTS-Today-In-Theatre-History-MAY-11


1920 American author, critic and playwright William Dean Howells dies today in New York City. In his criticism he championed the work of James A. Herne and Clyde Fitch. His plays include Yorick's Love, The Garroters and The Mouse Trap (not to be confused with Agatha Christie's play of the same name). He was 83 years old.