William Dean Howells was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio in 1837. The son of an itinerant newspaper editor, he began printing and typesetting work at an early age. In 1866 he started as an assistant editor for The Atlantic Monthly, becoming editor by 1871, a position he held until 1881. His own literary reputation took off a year later with the 1882 publication of the realist novel A Modern Instance. The Rise of Silas Lapham, Annie Kilburn, and A Hazard of New Fortunes followed. A close friend of Mark Twain and Henry James, he also wrote criticism and essays supporting such authors as Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Stephen Crane, and Emily Dickinson. He was one of seven chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1904, and later became its president. He died in 1920.
