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William Dean Howells (1837-1920): Chronology

For more biographical information,  see Edwin Cady's two-volume biography of Howells, John Crowley's The Black Heart's Truth, Kenneth Lynn's 1971 biography, and other works from the bibliography.

Year	Events	Works (Titles and dates of first American editions appear as listed in the University of California's Melvyl library system and checked against the Facts on File bibliography listing on Howells. . Please e-mail corrections to this chronology.)
1837 top.	March 1.  William Dean Howells is born in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, to William Cooper and Mary Dean Howells, the second child and second son of their eight children
1840 top	William Cooper Howells becomes editor of the Hamilton, Ohio, Intelligencer and publishes a Swedenborgian newspaper called The Retina on the side.
1848	Trying to gather support for the Free Soil party, William Cooper Howells quits the Intelligencer over a matter of principle. The family moves to Dayton, Eureka Mills, and other places in Ohio.
1851 top	The Howells family moves to Columbus for 18 months and later to Ashtabula and Jefferson (in 1853); Howells works as a printer.  According to Edwin Cady, Howells could "set type at six, was a useful hand at nine, and when he was eleven he could set five thousand ems a day, a man's work" (The Road to Realism 25).
1852	Without William Dean Howells's knowledge, his father has one of WDH's poems published in the Ohio State Journal.
1853	Howells's first published fiction, "A Tale of Love and Politics, Adventures of a Printer Boy," appears in the Ashtabula Sentinel
1856	William Cooper Howells is elected Clerk of the State House of Representatives.
1857	Howells begins to learn German and to admire the poet Heinrich Heine. He writes a column ("Letter from Columbus") for the Daily Cincinnati Gazette.
1858	Autumn. Howells begins work for the Ohio State Journal, writing reviews, poems, and stories, and translating stories from French, German, and Spanish newspapers.
1860 top	Howells meets Elinor Mead, his future wife.  He travels to Boston and Concord (see Literary Friends and Acquaintance) where he meets J. T. Fields, Lowell, Holmes, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Emerson.	Poems of Two Friends Lives and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln (campaign biography)
1861	Sails from New York to Liverpool and then Venice to take up consular appointment.
1862	Christmas Eve.  Marries Elinor Mead at the American embassy in Paris.
1863	December 17. First child, Winifred, born to WD and Elinor Howells.
1864	Article on "Recent Italian Comedy" for North American Review Returns to America and begins to work for The Nation
1865-66	WDH lives in New York as a freelance journalist.
1866	Meets James T. Fields on January 7; Fields offers Howells the assistant editorship of the Atlantic Monthly a few days later. Howells settles on Berkley St. in Cambridge, Mass.	Venetian Life
1867		Italian Journeys
1868	August 14. The Howellses' second child, John Mead Howells, is born. Howells's mother dies. Howells refuses the offer of a professorship in Rhetoric from Union College.
1869	Howells meets Mark Twain in Fields's office, the beginning of a friendship that will last the rest of their lives.	No Love Lost: A Romance of Travel
1871 top	July 1.  Howells becomes the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, a post he will keep for the next ten years.	Suburban Sketches Their Wedding Journey. Howells's first novel.(Boston: Osgood, 1871)
1872	The Howellses design and build a house at 37 Concord Avenue in Cambridge. 26 September. The Howellses' third child, daughter Mildred,  is born.
1873		A Chance Acquaintance Poems. Augmented edition: 1886.
1875		A Foregone Conclusion Private Theatricals (published as Mrs. Farrell in 1921) serialized in the November, 1875 Atlantic.  It is the only one of Howells's novels not immediately published in book form after serialization.
1876	Some time before this summer, Howells attends a performance of Euripedes'Medea, an experience that inspires A Modern Instance.	Sketch of the Life and Character of Rutherford B. Hayes. (campaign biography) A Day's Pleasure (play) The Parlor Car: A Farce
1877	Howells establishes the "Contributors Club" feature in the Atlantic Monthly in January. Whittier Birthday Dinner	Out of the Question: A Comedy A Counterfeit Presentment  (play)
1879		The Lady of the Aroostook
1880 top		The Undiscovered Country
1881		A Fearful Responsibility, and Other Stories Doctor Breen's Practice: A Novel
1882	The Howells family arrives in England; they spend the winter in Venice, where WDH gathers materials for his book Tuscan Cities. WDH declines a professorship at Johns Hopkins University. He had already declined one at Washington University during the seventies.	A Modern Instance: A Novel A Fearful Responsibility and Tonelli's Marriage (stories)
1883		A Woman's Reason The Sleeping Car: A Farce
1884	August.  Howells buys a house at 302 Beacon Street in Boston, two doors away from Oliver Wendell Holmes.	The Rise of Silas Lapham begins serial publication in the Century,  November 1884- Three Villages (essays) The Register: Farce  A Little Girl among the Old Masters
1885		The Rise of Silas Lapham A Likely Story (play) The Elevator: Farce
1886	Howells begins writing the "Editor's Study" column for Harper's New Monthly Magazine.  It contains some of his best criticism, and several pieces will be collected in Criticism and Fiction. Harvard offers WDH the Smith Professorship previously held by Longfellow and Lowell.  Howells declines. February-March. Howells spends time in Washington, D. C. with John Hay and Henry Adams. May 4. During an Anarchist meeting in Haymarket Square, Chicago, bombs explode,  killing one man and injuring seven more.  In the absence of suspects, eight Anarchists are charged with murder and seven are sentenced to hang.  Outraged at the injustice, WDH writes a letter to the New York Tribune in protest, and, after the men are hanged on November 11, an editorial letter called "A Word for the Dead."	Indian Summer (Harper's Monthly, July 1885-); Boston: Ticknor, 1886. Tuscan Cities Dr. Breen's Practice The Garroters (farce)
1887		The Minister's Charge Modern Italian Poets: Essays and Versions  (derived from the Lowell Lectures delivered at Harvard in 1870)
1888		April Hopes Mark Twain's Library of Humor Their Wedding Journey: with an Additional Chapter A Sea-change : or, Love's Stowaway, a Lyricated Farce in Two Acts and an Epilogue
1889	Hoping to cure his daughter Winnie's persistent and mysterious illness, Howells puts her under the care of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, originator of the "rest cure" made famous in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper."  Howells writes to Mark Twain,  "If she could have been allowed to read, I think the experiment might have succeeded, but I think the privation has thrown her thoughts back upon her, and made her morbid and hypochondriacal" (Crowley 116). Mitchell and others have diagnosed Winnie's illness as psychological in origin, but after she dies on March 3, an autopsy reveals physical disease.  The death devastates WD and Elinor Howells.	Annie Kilburn The Mouse-Trap and Other Farces The Sleeping-Car and Other Farces (Edited with Thomas Sergeant Perry) Library of Universal Adventure by Sea and Land; Including Original Narratives and Authentic Stories of Personal Prowess and Peril in all the Waters and Regions of the Globe from the Year 79 A.D. to the Year 1888 A. D
1890 top	An  "Editor's Study" column criticizes Harold Frederic's In the Valley but praises Seth's Brother's Wife (1887) and The Lawton Girl (1890).  In 1899, Howells lists Frederic's masterpiece, The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), as one of the country's major serious novels.	A Hazard of New Fortunes The Shadow of a Dream A Boy's Town Described for "Harper's Young People"  (memoir)
1891	Howells moves to New York, and, according to Edwin Cady and others,  brings the "literary center of the country" with him.	Criticism and Fiction
1892	March. Howells's last column for the "Editor's Study"	An Imperative Duty The Albany Depot: A Farce in One Act  (NY: Samuel French, 1891) The Quality of Mercy A Letter of Introduction: Farce A Little Swiss Sojourn Christmas Every Day and Other Stories Told for Children
1893	March. Stephen Crane sends Howells a copy of Maggie; Howells reads it and praises it in a newspaper interview, working from that day forward to get it republished. WDH reads the manuscripts of George's Mother, Crane's poems, and The Third Violet, but not The Red Badge of Courage.	The World of Chance: A Novel (serial version at MOA) My Year in a Log Cabin (essay and memoir; reprinted from 1887 article for Youth's Companion) The Coast of Bohemia: A Novel "The Man of Letters as a Man of Business" Evening Dress: Farce
1894		A Traveler from Altruria (utopian romance) Five O'Clock Tea (farce)
1895	Begins "Life and Letters" essay review column for Harper's Weekly (March 30, 1895-February 26, 1898)	Stops of Various Quills (poems) My Literary Passions Recollections of Life in Ohio, from 1813-1840
1896	On the recommendation of James Herne, WDH reads Paul Laurence Dunbar's privately printed Majors and Minors and praises it in his Harper's Weekly "Life and Letters" column.  He persuades literary agent Ripley Hitchcock to place Dunbar's work and writes an introduction  for Dunbar's next volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life.	The Day of Their Wedding Impressions and Experiences (essays) A Parting and a Meeting (story) Idyls in Drab (includes The Day of Their Wedding and A Parting and  a Meeting) The Country Printer, an Essay
1897		The Landlord at Lion's Head An Open-Eyed Conspiracy Stories of Ohio (children's history) An Open-Eyed Conspiracy, an Idyl of Saratoga A Previous Engagement: Comedy
1898	Begins essay-review column "American Literature" for Literature (May 14, 1898-November 10, 1899). Frank Norris comes to Howells's attention with the publication of Moran of the "Lady Letty." WDH later reviews McTeague, and a grateful Norris sends him a presentation copy of The Octopus.	The Story of a Play: A Novel
1899		Their Silver Wedding Journey Ragged Lady, a Novel
1900 top		Literary Friends and Acquaintance (essays) Bride Roses: A Scene An Indian Giver: A Comedy The Landlord at Lion's Head: A Novel Room Forty-Five; A Farce The Smoking Car: A Farce
1901		Heroines of Fiction The Niagara Book (with Mark Twain and Nathaniel Southgate Shaler) A Pair of Patient Lovers
1902		The Kentons: A Novel The Flight of Pony Baker: A Boy's Town Story Literature and Life: Studies
1903		Letters Home (novel) Questionable Shapes Evening-Dress (farce)
1904		The Son of Royal Langbrith
1905		Miss Bellard's Inspiration "Editha" is published in Harper's Monthly (January 1905) and reprinted in Between the Dark and the Daylight. London Films (travel)
1906		Certain Delightful English Towns, With Glimpses of the Pleasant Country Between
1907		Through the Eye of the Needle, a Romance Between the Dark and the Daylight: Romances
1908		Fennel and Rue: A Novel The Whole Family (collaborative novel with eleven other writers, including Henry James, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Alice Brown) Roman Holidays, and Others
1909		Seven English Cities The Mother and the Father: Dramatic Passages Boy life; stories and readings selected from the works of William Dean Howells, and arranged for supplementary reading in elementary schools (ed. Percival Chubb)
1910 top	Death of Mark Twain Death of Elinor Mead Howells	My Mark Twain In After Days: Thoughts on the Future Life (Authors included: Howells, William Dean;James, Henry; Bigelow, John; Higginson, Thomas Wentworth; Alden, Henry Mills;Thomson, William Hanna; Ferrero, Guglielmo; Howe, Julia Ward; Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.) Imaginary Interviews
1911	Howells joins with Edith Wharton and others in an attempt to get the Nobel Prize in literature for Henry James.  The attempt is unsuccessful.	The Writings of William Dean Howells (edition) Parting Friends: A Farce
1913		New Leaf Mills: A Chronicle  (based on the Howells family's Eureka Mills experiment) Familiar Spanish Travels
1914		The Seen and Unseen at Stratford-on-Avon: A Fantasy  (story)
1915	Harper's agrees to pay Howells $5,000 a year for the "Editor's Easy Chair" and occasional introductions to books. WDH buys a Model T Ford.
1916	Death of Henry James	The Leatherwood God (novel) Years of My Youth (autobiography to 1860) The Daughter of the Storage and Other Things in Prose and Verse  (poems) The Book of the Homeless, ed. Edith Wharton (contributors: Wharton, Edith; Brooke, Rupert; Conrad, Joseph; Galsworthy, John; Hardy, Thomas; James, Henry; Howells, William Dean;Yeats, W. B.) Buying a Horse
1917
1918
1919		Eighty Years and After
1920 top	May 11.  In New York, Howells dies in his sleep.	The Vacation of the Kelwyns, an Idyl of the Middle Eighteen-Seventies (published posthumously)