SOURCE: "Howells' 'Editha'—Toward Realism," in Americana-Austriaca, edited by Klaus Lanzinger, Wilhelm Braumüller, 1974, pp. 3-9.

In the following essay, Engelhart views "Editha" in light of the changing landscape of nineteenth-century literature,

Readers of American literature who are familiar with the literary scene in the period after the Civil War are already aware of the contribution that William Dean Howells, the now forgotten Dean of American Letters, made in the fight toward gaining acceptance for a more realistic view of life than was the acceptable mode prior, say, to the Civil War. One need only recall, for example, the view of farm life implicit in the scenes described by John Greenleaf Whittier in Snowbound, published in 1866, and then compare these with the scenes of farm life in the work of Hamlin Garland, written in the 1890's, to appreciate in a rather dramatic way one of the changes that...