William Dean Howells (1837–1920) is represented here by 105 public-domain titles, including A Belated Guest (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance), A Boy's Town, and A Chance Acquaintance. This page is a shelf list: the books are read on Open Library, not stored here.
The Rise of Silas Lapham stays with the materialistic rise of Silas Lapham from rags to riches, and his ensuing moral susceptibility. Silas earns a fortune in the paint business, but he lacks social standards, which he tries to attain through his daughter's marriage into the aristocratic Corey family.
A Modern Instance concerns the deterioration of an once loving marriage under the influence of capitalistic greed. A Modern Instance is the first American novel by a canonical author to seriously consider divorce as a realistic outcome of marriage.
Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance is the final volume in Howells's "Altrurian trilogy," following A Traveler from Altruria and Letters of an Altrurian Traveler. Like the second book in the trilogy, Howells casts the third and final book in the form of an epistolary novel — a form favored by some other Utopian and dystopian writers.
A Traveler from Altruria: Romance was first published in installments in The Cosmopolitan between November and October, and eventually in book form by Harper & Brothers. A Traveler from Altruria: Romance is a critique of unfettered capitalism and its consequences, and of the Gilded Age.
The Flight of Pony Baker A Boy's Town Story was published by Harper and Brothers New York, New York. The Flight of Pony Baker A Boy's Town Story recounts a young boy named Pony Baker who, throughout the book, attempts to run away from his home where he lives with his mother, father, and five sisters.