Howells, William Dean
(01 March 1837–11 May 1920)
- Edwin H. Cady
Extract
Howells, William Dean (01 March 1837–11 May 1920), author, was born in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, the son of William Cooper Howells, a “country printer,” and Mary Dean. He was named for his uncle William Dean, a noted Ohio River steamboat pilot. All his life he felt ethnically different: “American,” not “Anglo-Saxon.” The Howellses were Welsh immigrants with Quakerish and radical leanings. In proslavery southern Ohio the father’s radical notions (Swedenborgian, utopian, egalitarian, antislavery) cost him his newspaper in Hamilton, scene of ...
