SOURCE: "From Psychologism to Psychic Romance," in The Mask of Fiction: Essays on W. D. Howells, The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989, pp. 133-55.

In the following excerpt, Crowley offers an overview of Howells's psychic stories.

In August 1900 Howells wrote to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century, about two stories, both of which were ultimately to be included in Questionable Shapes. Howells described one as "the study of a man's state and relative conditions after having really seen a ghost, or something he can honestly explain as nothing else, and oddly enough it is rather humorous, and involves a prosperous love-affair" (SL, 4:248).¹⁸ As the story evolved, Howells became increasingly enchanted with it. "I think it is working out into something uncommon," he told Gilder. "I must keep myself from bragging about it, and perhaps the thing is merely playing upon my weakness as an author, but it seems...