SOURCE: An introduction to Selected Short Stories of William Dean Howells, edited by Ruth Bardon, Ohio University Press, 1997, pp. xiii-xxvii.

In the following essay, Bardon surveys critical reaction to Howells's short fiction and discusses the defining characteristics of his sketches and short stories.)

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The achievement of William Dean Howells as novelist, editor, and social and literary critic is no longer in dispute. Although there will always be readers who fail to succumb to his subtle and ironic charm or who are bored by the moral complexity of his characters' lives, Howells is universally recognized as a major writer of his generation, as the leader of the late-nineteenth-century "realism war," and as a truly influential friend and mentor to a stellar list of contemporary and later writers. The Indiana University Press selected edition of his works has surely helped to secure definitively his reputation, as has a host of...