Half-Hours With the Best American Authors, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from Half-Hours With the Best American Authors, Vol. 2

It is the house of the great Sallust, my masters. Would you like his autograph? I know one of his slaves who would sell it.

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Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Half-Hours With the Best American Authors, Vol. 2

William Dean Howells, who has recently risen into distinguished prominence as an American novelist of the first order of ability, is a native of Ohio, where he was horn in 1837. His works are somewhat wide in scope, embracing novels, travels, and poems. There are no more delicate bits of word-painting than some of the scenes in "Venetian Life" and "Italian Journeys," from the latter of which we offer a selection. These are among his earlier works. More recently his attention has been given to fiction, in which he has attained a position of great popularity. His method is to depict life as it actually exists, devoid of all romance, and wearing its every-day garb. Yet he has a shrewd insight into character, and analyzes it with effective clearness. He has written several plays and short character-dramas.

Pompeii is, in truth, so full of marvel and surprise that it would be unreasonable to express disappointment with Pompeii in fiction. And yet I cannot help it. An exuberant carelessness of phrase in most writers and talkers who describe it had led me to expect much more than it was possible to find there.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.