![]() ![]() Howells’s roll of literary acquaintances included George Bancroft, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Julia Ward Howe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Francis Parkman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and many others. In his prepared remarks, he observed that he had known all those “in whom the story of American literature sums itself,” except for Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allen Poe, and William H. At that moment, Howells was, the Times reported with perhaps an intentional pun, “the Dean of American letters.” As an acclaimed novelist, critic, and editor, Howells understood his place in the history of American literature. The gala event received front-page coverage in the New York Times and was extensively recounted in other publications, such as the Saturday Evening Post. ![]() From England, Thomas Hardy and Henry James were only the most eminent of Howells’s contemporaries to send letters of congratulation. In 1912 400 eminent writers, journalists, editors, social reformers, university presidents, and public men, including William Howard Taft, who had altered his schedule to attend, crowded Sherry’s restaurant in New York City to celebrate Howells’s 75th birthday. March 1, 2012, marked the 175th anniversary of William Dean Howells’s birth. ![]()
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