A Day's Pleasure. Illustrated. (Vest-Pocket Series)

91 pp. Red cloth, gilt and titles with black borders and decorations. 4 7/8 x 3 3/8. Engraved frontispiece and two engravings in text. A short story by the American author. "In all, Howells wrote "about 200 books wholly or in part," say Gibson and Arms. His first publication, a poem, came in 1852. Between 1860 and 1921 appeared thirty-six novels, twelve books of travel, ten volumes of short stories and sketches, seven of literary criticism, five of autobiography, four of poetry, three of collected drama, and two presidential campaign biographies. There were many hundreds of essays, reviews, editorials, speeches, poems, farces, and miscellanea - some of them collected. He published in sixty-four magazines and nineteen newspapers and conducted eight different serial columns. At a time when the media were predominantly literate, Howells was the major presence. This was especially true during the 1890s... Howells stepped forward into the nascent modernist movement. Between 1890 and 1900 he published thirteen novels, four memoirs, and a book each of poetry, criticism, and collected essays. He ran three series of columns. He championed Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles Chesnutt, Abraham Cahan, Thorstein Veblen, Henrik Ibsen, and George Bernard Shaw, demolished Max Nordau, and defended Anna Karenina and The Kreutzer Sonata. He developed as a feminist, an anti-imperialist, an egalitarian, and a socialist. He moved toward psychological realism and produced utopian romances." - American Dictionary of National Biography