The son of a Welsh father, William Cooper Howells, and an Irish-German mother, Mary Dean Howells, William Dean Howells was born in Martin's Ferry in Belmont County, Ohio, the second of eight children. Although he had little formal education, the future writer grew up in a home where literature was of great importance. In 1840 his father, a printer, moved his family to Hamilton, Ohio, where he became editor of the Hamilton Intelligencer, and in 1849 he bought the Dayton Transcript, moving his family once again. The young Howells began working as a printer on his father's newspapers at a very young age. The Dayton Transcript folded in 1851, and the next year when his father became editor of the Ashtabula Sentinel, the family moved to Ashtabula, Ohio, and six months later to Jefferson, Ohio, where the Sentinel became the Jefferson Gazette. During these early years Howells wrote extensively for the...