William Dean Howells was born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, into a large family with radical political and religious tendencies. He was apprenticed to his father, a printer, and became a journalist. With, as he was to say, “an almost entire want of schooling,” he read widely in his father’s library, teaching himself Spanish, German, French, and Italian. Having written in support of Lincoln’s 1860 presidential campaign, Howells was rewarded with a consulship in Venice (1861). Returning to America in 1865, he rose as a journalist, moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to be assistant editor (1866–71) and then editor (1871–81) of the Atlantic Monthly. He then retired to concentrate on writing. Among his personal friends were Henry Adams, William and Henry James, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His friendship with SLC dates from his review of The Innocents Abroad in 1869. Howells used his position at the epicenter of American letters to assure Mark Twain’s literary success; he also served his friend as editor, proofreader, and sounding-board. In literature, Howells championed and practiced realism. His best novels, out of a vast output, are usually considered to be The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890); he memorialized SLC in My Mark Twain (1910).