The publication in 1882 of this classic book by "The Dean of American Letters" marked his transition from magazine editor and author of some mildly received comedies of manners, to leading American novelist and champion of realism in American literature. The story of Bartley Hubbard, a philandering, dishonest Boston journalist, and Marcia Gaylord, the wife who divorces him, is the first serious treatment of divorce in American literature. Although Howells had considered writing the novel for years, the actual composition of it brought forth another theme besides that of divorce--that...

These two nouvelles mark Howells' plunge into psychological realism. Their themes-a triangle of tragic agonies with psychological insights intriguingly proto-Freudian, and a drama of miscegenation-are anything but the "smiling," lightweight topics to which Howells has been supposed to have been confined. The maturity both of their art and of their moral insight lends them an impact much deeper and more permanent than that of the shriller, more merely commercial shocking fiction of our day. Edwin H. Cady's introduction places the books in the context of the development of Howells' life, work,...