Volume 18, Number 1 (Fall 2015) g{x [ÉãxÄÄá|tÇ Published biannually (with occasional lapses) by the William Dean Howells Society for the information of its members and interested others. New & Renewed WDH Society Memberships Table of Contents $15 Paypal Follow the “Membership” link: howellssociety.wordpress.com Check ~ Send your name, mailing address, and email ad‐ dress to: Membership & Services Informaon…………………………………………..1 Prof. Mischa Renfroe Middle Tennessee State University Call for Papers—American Literature Associaon, San Francisco, English Department May 2016…………………………………………………………………………...………2 Box 70 1301 E. Main St. Howells Essay Prize 2015—Call for Entrants………………………..……..3 Murfreesboro, TN 37132 2014 Howells Essay Prize Winner: Graduate students join free for 2 years Andrew Ball, Redempve Realism: Liberaon Soteriology in the Send informaon as above Novels of William Dean Howells…………………………………………...……3 Howells Society Business Meeng Minutes……………………………..…6 Members, Please Update Your Email Address Please send your email address for confirmaon or up‐ Essay Abstracts—American Literature Associaon, Boston, May date to the Society’s secretary, Professor Mischa Renfroe 2015……………………………………………………………………………………..…...7 (mischa.renfroe @ mtsu.edu). A Radical Howells To save on mailing costs and conserve natural resources, ‘Dynamite Talk’: Howells, Haymarket, and Legal Complicity the Society has recently moved to electronic publicaon ‘Our Western Friend’: Howells, Hay, and The Bread‐Winners of this newsleer via email, with follow‐up posng to the ‘A Woman’s Brand’ of Success Society’s website. Liberal Guilt and Social Jusce: the Limits of Genteel Sympathy Recent mailings have revealed significant gaps in our New Approaches to A Hazard of New Fortunes email address list for Society members. The Voice of the Veteran William Dean Howells Society Executive Committee ‘Dere iss no Ameriga any more’: Unintelligible Subjects President & Program Chair: Daniel J. Mrozowski, Trinity Col‐ ‘Feeling like Populace’: Public Transportaon and the Doctrine of lege (Conneccut) Complicity Vice President: Andrew Ball, Lindenwood University Secretary / Treasurer: Mischa Renfroe, Middle Tennessee The Rise of Silas Lapham— State University Forthcoming New Norton Crical Edion…………………………….…….9 Webmaster: Donna Campbell, Washington State University Howellsian Editor: Paul R. Petrie, Southern Conneccut State University Volume 18, Number 1 (Fall 2015) William Dean Howells Society Panels for ALA May, 2016 The William Dean Howells Society welcomes submissions for two panels at the an‐ nual American Literature Associaon conference in San Francisco, May 26‐29, 2016. Panel 1: Neglected Works We are seeking papers on the neglected works of William Dean Howells. We are especially interested in papers that address his output as an essayist, a poet, and a playwright. Papers on his lesser‐known novels, such as The Undiscovered Country or New Leaf Mills, would also be appreciated. Panel 2: Open Topic We are looking for insighul, original papers that address any aspect of Howells’s work. Please submit your 200‐250 word abstract and a current CV (or any quesons) to Dan Mrozowski at [email protected] by January 15th. Daniel Mrozowski Department of English Trinity College 115 Vernon St. Harord, CT 06106 612‐670‐5016 Howells and James as brain surgeons. W.A. Rogers. Life, Volume 7 (20 May 1886). 2 Volume 18, Number 1 (Fall 2015) Call for Entrants Howells Essay Prize 2015 Competition The Howells Society Essay Prize is awarded each year for the best paper on Howells presented at the annual ALA conference. The winning essay may have been presented in any session on the program of the conference, including but not limited to panels sponsored by the Howells Society. Papers are judged by members of the Execuve Commiee, who have the opon of appoinng addional readers as necessary. The author of the winning essay will receive a cash award of $250, and the winning essay will be published (with the author’s permission) in a future issue of The Howellsian. Copyright remains with the writer of the essay, so publicaon here does not preclude later publicaon elsewhere of a revised version of the essay. 2015 presenters who wish to enter their papers in this year’s compeon must submit them by January 16, 2016 to the Society’s President, Dan Mrozowski. You are welcome to revise your paper before subming it, but please keep in mind that the essay should be a "conference length" paper and should not exceed 12‐15 pages, maximum. Please send the papers as e‐mail aachments, in MS Word format, to daniel.mrozowski @ trincoll.edu. produced by capitalist society. And he believes that literature is a 2014 Howells Essay Prize Winner potent, and indeed, necessary catalyst for iniang the kind of Redempve Realism: Liberaon Soteriology in the concrete systemic reform that liberaon requires. He populates his Novels of William Dean Howells novels with characters who undergo a gradual awakening that leaves them disillusioned with modern American society and driven By Andrew Ball by a desire to bring their lives into greater conformity to the ideals Lindenwood University they so readily espouse but rarely pracce. Their progressive con‐ Aer undergoing a profound conversion experience in 1887, version is typically iniated by an encounter with Chrisan socialist William Dean Howells chose to devote all of his celebrity and ars‐ characters who want “the whole world to be free” and use forms c energy to exposing the modes of exploitaon and oppression of “altruisc agitaon” in their aempt to redeem American society intrinsic to the emerging system of industrial capitalism. Howells (WC 186, 140). In response to their social condions, these charac‐ was convinced that capitalism had been consecrated and estab‐ ters develop a proletarian Christology which depicts Jesus as Christ lished as the new, dominant American religion; during the Gilded the Liberator. In their eyes, “Christ Himself came as a labouring Age, he argued, capitalism had superseded Chrisanity as the man” who fought to liberate the poor from want and the oppres‐ source of the sacred norms guiding Americans’ thought and behav‐ sion of the Roman Empire, and, as a result, was executed as a revo‐ ior. Despite the blessings of prosperity and progress that capitalism luonary (AK 756). They argue that Gilded Age Americans find appeared to bestow on the people in a me of unprecedented themselves in a similar social environment, where the masses are naonal growth, Howells contended that it was an idolatrous faith tyrannized by a system of industrial slavery and abject poverty, predicated on the subjugaon of the masses. Over the next decade, where insecurity, dependence, inequality, and ignorance stand in he composed a series of “economic novels” – Annie Kilburn (1888), the way of authenc freedom. They argue that, though the naon A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), The Quality of Mercy (1891), The boasts of the liberty it affords it cizens, “there can be no freedom World of Chance (1893), and A Traveler from Altruria (1894) – in where there is the fear of want”; therefore to redeem society, for which he developed the most sophiscated literary crique of mod‐ Americans to be truly free, the working‐class must be liberated ern capitalism to date and elaborated, from a theological perspec‐ from poverty and from the form of polical economy that system‐ ve, a course of acon aimed at liberang the American people acally exploits them (WC 185). In his economic novels, Howells from forms of bondage imposed by the industrial system. In these aempts to convince his readership that Chrisan socialism pro‐ works, Howells examined the process of reificaon which led the vides the means to redeem American society from these condions aributes and aims of capitalism to be exalted and imbued with and to establish a robust democracy. His liberaon soteriology is divine significance, causing a reversal of normave values to take wrien into the economic novels in an effort to not only cricize place in American culture. Howells hoped to deliver Americans the established order, but to provide a posive soluon to forms of from their idolatry by revealing how the economic order was undu‐ social sin and to outline, indirectly, a liberatory praxis. ly sacralized and by elucidang the dire polical consequences of In 1887 Howells became disillusioned with “the evils of post‐ this process. Capitalism, he argued, necessarily causes naonal Civil War industry” and the commercial culture of Gilded Age Amer‐ disunion, inequality, and the slow decay of our moral sense, and is ica (Taylor 108). The same man who had risen to fame as the quin‐ therefore antagonisc to the fundamental ideals of both Chrisani‐ tessenal bourgeois American novelist would, during the mature ty and American democracy. However, he also believed that “the stages of his career, become “our most polically radical writer,” author was the prophet of beer things; he was a Moses, who, if and one of the Gilded Age’s most adept advocates of Chrisan so‐ we followed him, would lead us up from” bondage, towards the cialism (Parrish 25). Just as the case had been for Transcendental‐ progressive redempon of modern American culture (WC 349). ists and antebellum labor acvists in the pre‐Marxian era of Ameri‐ Howells contends that the redempon of America is conn‐ gent on delivering the naon from industrial slavery, from the es‐ (Continued on page 4) trangement of the classes, and from the moral degradaon that is 3 Volume 18, Number 1 (Fall 2015)

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