Years Of My Youth

by William Dean Howells

Overview

Here William Dean Howells has written down the interesting facts of his life up to the time he went abroad as U. S. consul; and not only the facts , but also the early impressions and numerous influences which went to mold the man and the writer. Born in 1837 , at Martin's Ferry , Ohio , of mingled Welsh, German, English and Irish stock, the young son of a printer and publisher could set type almost from babyhood. Love of reading supplemented irregular schooling. He tells of his first efforts at writing, of the broad religious tolerant spirit in his father's home , of his first experience of politics and the abolitionist movement. The family moved later to Dayton, and the young printer - for he worked hard to help his father - found a new interest here in the theater. In later chapters he pictures the life at the State Capital, Columbus, over a half century ago , with its political and social interests, and describes his own youthful enthusiasms. Here he aided his father in reporting the sessions of the legislature. When the family moved again to Ashtabula, young Howells varied his printing labors with the study of foreign languages. As a reporter for the Cincinnati Gazette and later for the Ohio State Journal he knew and revered the prominent journalists of the Middle West. This chronicling of his early literary successes and his first entrance into the Atlantic Monthly's charmed circle show the future author with his feet firmly set on his life's road.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783849657925
Publisher:	Jazzybee Verlag
Publication date:	06/08/2020
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	344
File size:	654 KB

Read an Excerpt

t of blissful living which they interrupted hold few or no records which I can allege in proof of my belief that I was then, above every other when, Joyful and free from blame. Throughout those years at Hamilton I think of my father as absorbed in the mechanical and intellectual work of his newspaper. My earliest sense of him relates him as much to the types and the press as to the table where he wrote his editorials amidst the talk of the printers, or of the politicians who came to discuss public affairs with him. From a quaint pride, he did not like his printer's craft to be called a trade; he contended that it was a profession; he was interested in it, as the expression of his taste, and the exercise of his ingenuity and invention, and he could supply many deficiencies in its means and processes. He cut fonts of large type for job-work out of apple-wood in default of box or olive; he even made the graver's tools for carving the letters. Nothing pleased him better than to contrive a thing out of something it was not meant for, as making a penknife blade out of an old razor, or the like. He could do almost anything with his ready hand and his ingenious brain, while I have never been able to do anything with mine but write a few score books. But as for the printer's craft with me, it was simply my joy and pride from the first things I knew of it. I know when I could not read, for I recall supplying the text from my imagination for the pictures I found in books, but I do not know when I could not set type. My first attempt at literature was not written, but put up in type, and printed off by me. My father praised it, and this made me so proud that I showedit to one of those eminentWhig politicians always haunting the office. He made no comment on it, but asked me if I cou...