Produced by David Widger
By William Dean Howells
1895
The papers collected here under the name of 'My Literary Passions' wereprinted serially in a periodical of such vast circulation that they mightwell have been supposed to have found there all the acceptance that couldbe reasonably hoped for them. Nevertheless, they were reissued in avolume the year after they first appeared, in 1895, and they had apleasing share of such favor as their author's books have enjoyed. Butit is to be doubted whether any one liked reading them so much as heliked writing them—say, some time in the years 1893 and 1894, in a NewYork flat, where he could look from his lofty windows over two miles anda half of woodland in Central Park, and halloo his fancy wherever hechose in that faery realm of books which he re-entered in reminiscencesperhaps too fond at times, and perhaps always too eager for the reader'sfollowing. The name was thought by the friendly editor of the popularpublication where they were serialized a main part of such inspiration asthey might be conjectured to have, and was, as seldom happens with editorand author, cordially agreed upon before they were begun.
The name says, indeed, so exactly and so fully what they are that littleremains for their bibliographer to add beyond the meagre historicaldetail here given. Their short and simple annals could be eked out byconfidences which would not appreciably enrich the materials of theliterary history of their time, and it seems better to leave them to theimagination of such posterity as they may reach. They are ratherhelplessly frank, but not, I hope, with all their rather helplessfrankness, offensively frank. They are at least not part of the polemicwhich their author sustained in the essays following them in this volume,and which might have been called, in conformity with 'My LiteraryPassions', by the title of 'My Literary Opinions' better than by thevague name which they actually wear.
They deal, to be sure, with the office of Criticism and the art ofFiction, and so far their present name is not a misnomer. It followsthem from an earlier date and could not easily be changed, and it mayserve to recall to an elder generation than this the time when theirauthor was breaking so many lances in the great, forgotten war betweenRealism and Romanticism that the floor of the "Editor's Study" inHarper's Magazine was strewn with the emba