Howells, William Dean
Howells, William Dean( 1837–1920),born in Ohio, began at the age of nine to set type in his father's printing office. As he tells in My Year in a Log Cabin (1893) and The Country Printer in Impressions and Experiences (1896), his formal education was very slight and he had to school himself in the pressroom and from his father's bookcase. The family life in Hamilton, one of several Ohio towns to which they migrated, is revealed in the autobiographical A Boy's Town (1890). After many moves, the family settled in Columbus, where from 1856 to 1861 Howells wrote for the Ohio State Journal, and with J.J. Piatt published the Poems of Two Friends (1860). Meanwhile he was passionately studying languages and reading what literature he could obtain, activities which in later life he described in such volumes as My Literary Passions (1895), Literary Friends and Acquaintance (1900), Years of My...
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