Drawing on the columns he wrote for Harper’s Monthly, Howells argues that fiction should be judged by its fidelity to life, and that most novel-reading is empty dissipation. He attacks the sentimental romance, defends realism in American and European writers, and asks how critics can ever find a lasting standard of taste.
The central manifesto of American literary realism from the author of The Rise of Silas Lapham. Download the free EPUB.