A Hazard of New Fortunes

by William Dean Howells, Phillip Lopate (Introduction)

Overview

Centering on a conflict between a self-made millionaire and an idealistic reformer in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York, A Hazard of New Fortunes insightfully renders the complexities of the American experience at a time of great social and economic upheaval and transformation. In its depiction of wealth, poverty, and New York City life, it remains a strikingly contemporary work.

Reproduced here is the authoritative Indiana University Press Edition edited and annotated by David J. Nordloh, with full scholarly commentary and extensive textual apparatus.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140439236
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/01/2001
Series:	Penguin Classics Series
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	1,151,271
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.69(h) x 1.04(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio. His father was a printer and newspaperman, and the family moved from town to town. Howells went to school where he could. As a boy he began learning the printer’s skill. By the time he was in his teens he was setting type for his own verse. Between 1856 and 1861 he worked as a reporter for the Ohio State Journal. About this time his poems began to appear in the Atlantic Monthly. His campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln, compiled in 1860, prompted the administration to offer him the consulship at Venice, a post he held from 1861 to 1865. He married Elinor Gertrude Meade, a young woman from Vermont, in 1862 Paris. On his return to the United States in 1865, Howells worked in New York before going to Boston as assistant to James T. Fields of The Atlantic Monthly. In 1871 he became editor-in-chief of the magazine. In this position he worked with many young writers, among them Mark Twain and Henry James, both of whom became his close friends. His first novel, Their Wedding Journey, appeared in 1872. The Rise of Silas Lapham was serialized in Century Magazine before it was published in book form in 1885. A Hazard of New Fortunes was published five years later. His position as critic, writer, and enthusiastic exponent of the new realism earned William Dean Howells the respected title of Dean of American Letters.

Read an Excerpt

From the Commentary, by Adam Gopnik
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "A Hazard of New Fortunes"
by .
Copyright © 2001 William Dean Howells.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"No one before Howells had thought to capture the teeming, heterogeneous, multifarious, high-tension city on a single great canvas. Against the variegated backdrop of New York City, Howells dramatizes the intellectual and spiritual conflicts of the democratic future." —Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

"The exactest and truest portrayal of New York and New York life ever written." —Mark Twain

"Simply prodigious."—Henry James

Editorial Reviews

"No one before Howells had thought to capture the teeming, heterogeneous, multifarious, high-tension city on a single great canvas. Against the variegated backdrop of New York City, Howells dramatizes the intellectual and spiritual conflicts of the democratic future." —Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

"The exactest and truest portrayal of New York and New York life ever written." —Mark Twain

"Simply prodigious."—Henry James

From the Publisher