



Produced by David Widger





MY LITERARY PASSIONS

By William Dean Howells


1895


    BIBLIOGRAPHICAL.

    I.      THE BOOKCASE AT HOME
    II.     GOLDSMITH
    III.    CERVANTES
    IV.     IRVING
    V.      FIRST FICTION AND DRAMA
    VI.     LONGFELLOW'S "SPANISH STUDENT"
    VII.    SCOTT
    VIII.   LIGHTER FANCIES
    IX.     POPE
    X.      VARIOUS PREFERENCES
    XI.     UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
    XII.    OSSIAN
    XIII.   SHAKESPEARE
    XIV.    IK MARVEL
    XV.     DICKENS
    XVI.    WORDSWORTH, LOWELL, CHAUCER
    XVII.   MACAULAY.
    XVIII.  CRITICS AND REVIEWS.
    XIX.    A NON-LITERARY EPISODE
    XX.     THACKERAY
    XXI.   "LAZARILLO DE TORMES"
    XXII.   CURTIS, LONGFELLOW, SCHLEGEL
    XXIII.  TENNYSON
    XXIV.   HEINE
    XXV.    DE QUINCEY, GOETHE, LONGFELLOW.
    XXVI.   GEORGE ELIOT, HAWTHORNE, GOETHE, HEINE
    XXVII.  CHARLES READE
    XXVIII. DANTE.
    XXIX.   GOLDONI, MANZONI, D'AZEGLIO
    XXX.   "PASTOR FIDO," "AMINTA," "ROMOLA," "YEAST," "PAUL FERROLL"
    XXXI.   ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN, BJORSTJERNE BJORNSON
    XXXII.  TOURGUENIEF, AUERBACH
    XXXIII. CERTAIN PREFERENCES AND EXPERIENCES
    XXXIV.  VALDES, GALDOS, VERGA, ZOLA, TROLLOPE, HARDY
    XXXV.   TOLSTOY




BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

The papers collected here under the name of 'My Literary Passions' were
printed serially in a periodical of such vast circulation that they might
well have been supposed to have found there all the acceptance that could
be reasonably hoped for them. Nevertheless, they were reissued in a
volume the year after they first appeared, in 1895, and they had a
pleasing share of such favor as their author's books have enjoyed. But
it is to be doubted whether any one liked reading them so much as he
liked writing them--say, some time in the years 1893 and 1894, in a New
York flat, where he could look from his lofty windows over two miles and
a half of woodland in Central Park, and halloo his fancy wherever he
chose in that faery realm of books which he re-entered in reminiscences
perhaps too fond at times, and perhaps always too eager for the reader's
following. The name was thought by the friendly editor of the popular
publication where they were serialized a main part of such inspiration as
they might be conjectured to have, and was, as seldom happens with editor
and author, cordially agreed upon before they were begun.

The name says, indeed, so exactly and so fully what they are that little
remains for their bibliographer to add beyond the meagre historical
detail here given. Their short and simple annals could be eked out by
confidences which would not appreciably enrich the materials of the
literary history of their time, and it seems better to leave them to the
imagination of such posterity as they may reach. They are rather
helplessly frank, but not, I hope, with all their rather helpless
frankness, offensively frank. They are at least not part of the polemic
which their author sustained in the essays following them in this volume,
and which might have been called, in conformity with 'My Literary
Passions', by the title of 'My Literary Opinions' better than by the
vague name which they actually wear.

They deal, to be sure, with the office of Criticism and the art of
Fiction, and so far their present name is not a misnomer. It follows
them from an earlier date and could not easily be changed, and it may
serve to recall to an elder generation than this the time when their
author was breaking so many lances in the great, forgotten war between
Realism and Romanticism that the floor of the "Editor's Study" in
Harper's Magazine was strewn with the embattled splinters. The "Editor's
Study" is now quite another place, but he who originally imagined it in
1886, and abode in it until 1892, made it at once the