Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1885 — Howells the Novelist. [ARTICLE]

Howells the Novelist.

W. D. Howells, to-day the leading novelist of America, began his life as a type-setter on his father’s newspaper in a country town in Ohio; afterward mounted to the dizzy height of exchange clipper on the Columbus State Journal, where he commenced writing poems for the Atlantic; was appointed Consul to Venice; published on his return “Venetian Life,” and soon after became assistant editor of the Boston Magazine, where he won his fame. It is a little singular that so fine a writer, 4 in point of style, should have had no regular education, should have received most of his instruction at the printing case. This maims, if it does not crush, the academic theory that a man cannot be a master of his own tongue without completing a course of classical studies.