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My Year in a Log Cabin
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68 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1893
18 people want to read
About the author
William Dean Howells
1,116 books98 followersWillam Dean Howells (1837-1920) was a novelist, short story writer, magazine editor, and mentor who wrote for various magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine.
In January 1866 James Fields offered him the assistant editor role at the Atlantic Monthly. Howells accepted after successfully negotiating for a higher salary, but was frustrated by Fields's close supervision. Howells was made editor in 1871, remaining in the position until 1881.
In 1869 he first met Mark Twain, which began a longtime friendship. Even more important for the development of his literary style — his advocacy of Realism — was his relationship with the journalist Jonathan Baxter Harrison, who during the 1870s wrote a series of articles for the Atlantic Monthly on the lives of ordinary Americans.
He wrote his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in 1872, but his literary reputation took off with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which described the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham is perhaps his best known, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur of the paint business. His social views were also strongly represented in the novels Annie Kilburn (1888), A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), and An Imperative Duty (1892). He was particularly outraged by the trials resulting from the Haymarket Riot.
His poems were collected during 1873 and 1886, and a volume under the title Stops of Various Quills was published during 1895. He was the initiator of the school of American realists who derived, through the Russians, from Balzac and had little sympathy with any other type of fiction, although he frequently encouraged new writers in whom he discovered new ideas.
Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, Giovanni Verga, Benito Pérez Galdós, and, especially, Leo Tolstoy, which helped establish their reputations in the United States. He also wrote critically in support of American writers Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Emily Dickinson, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles W. Chesnutt, Abraham Cahan, Madison Cawein,and Frank Norris. It is perhaps in this role that he had his greatest influence. In his "Editor's Study" column at the Atlantic Monthly and, later, at Harper's, he formulated and disseminated his theories of "realism" in literature.
In 1904 he was one of the first seven people chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of which he became president.
Howells died in Manhattan on May 11, 1920. He was buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts.
Noting the "documentary" and truthful value of Howells' work, Henry James wrote: "Stroke by stroke and book by book your work was to become, for this exquisite notation of our whole democratic light and shade and give and take, in the highest degree documentary."
In January 1866 James Fields offered him the assistant editor role at the Atlantic Monthly. Howells accepted after successfully negotiating for a higher salary, but was frustrated by Fields's close supervision. Howells was made editor in 1871, remaining in the position until 1881.
In 1869 he first met Mark Twain, which began a longtime friendship. Even more important for the development of his literary style — his advocacy of Realism — was his relationship with the journalist Jonathan Baxter Harrison, who during the 1870s wrote a series of articles for the Atlantic Monthly on the lives of ordinary Americans.
He wrote his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in 1872, but his literary reputation took off with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which described the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham is perhaps his best known, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur of the paint business. His social views were also strongly represented in the novels Annie Kilburn (1888), A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), and An Imperative Duty (1892). He was particularly outraged by the trials resulting from the Haymarket Riot.
His poems were collected during 1873 and 1886, and a volume under the title Stops of Various Quills was published during 1895. He was the initiator of the school of American realists who derived, through the Russians, from Balzac and had little sympathy with any other type of fiction, although he frequently encouraged new writers in whom he discovered new ideas.
Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, Giovanni Verga, Benito Pérez Galdós, and, especially, Leo Tolstoy, which helped establish their reputations in the United States. He also wrote critically in support of American writers Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Emily Dickinson, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles W. Chesnutt, Abraham Cahan, Madison Cawein,and Frank Norris. It is perhaps in this role that he had his greatest influence. In his "Editor's Study" column at the Atlantic Monthly and, later, at Harper's, he formulated and disseminated his theories of "realism" in literature.
In 1904 he was one of the first seven people chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of which he became president.
Howells died in Manhattan on May 11, 1920. He was buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts.
Noting the "documentary" and truthful value of Howells' work, Henry James wrote: "Stroke by stroke and book by book your work was to become, for this exquisite notation of our whole democratic light and shade and give and take, in the highest degree documentary."
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 6, 2022
After several tries, I have finally found a work by William Dean Howells that I like, namely My Year in a Log Cabin. In a way, it's a kind of sequel to his father William Cooper Howells' work, Recollections of Life in Ohio: From 1813-1840. The senior Howells was asked to manage a property containing a gristmill and a sawmill that belonged to his brothers, so he moved his family from their frame-and-brick house in the city to a log cabin out in the Ohio countryside.
The move was not auspicious. Both elder and younger William herded their cow out to their new place, a twelve-mile walk that ended at night, only to discover once they arrived that their cow had disappeared and headed right back to the old house. The herdsmen had been too busy discussing literature and philosophy during their long trek to pay attention to their duties. The family attempted to raise geese, only to discover the nuisance of trying to find where they had made their nests. Young William was even bitten on the nose by an angry goose while robbing it of its eggs. The senior William covered the walls with old newspapers, and his son complained that one of the stories broke off right at a point where it would tantalize him forever.
William slept in a loft and could see stars through cracks in the roof. Sometimes on winter mornings he stepped barefoot into snow that had drifted onto the floorboards, but these events were enough of a novelty that they did not bother him. The fireplace was a cavernous maw a full six feet wide and three feet deep. The family would cook their bacon and steaks over huge piles of hickory wood, and young William says the taste of that meat was unforgettable. The family inherited a pair of pigs from the previous owners of the place, who by their eagerness to enter the cabin indicated that they were apparently used to basking themselves by the warm fireside. Evicted, they spent their nights outside the chimney at its base, quarreling with each other over the choicest spot. Meanwhile, the family roasted their faces in front of the fire and froze their backs and feet from a draft that came from a door that never shut squarely.
The Howells' mother was not exactly pleased by this rude life, but William says that he and his brothers, being boys and thus natural savages, took to it immediately. The boys hunted game with a smooth-bore musket, an exercise in which Howells says, "The eldest did the shooting, and left the others to rush upon him as soon as he fired with tumultuous cries of 'Did you hit it? Did you hit it?' Usually, he had not hit it."
Young William read books ranging from Longfellow to "Simon Girty, the Renegade," while the gristmill close by made 'music for us night and day.' On Sundays when it was shut down, it was as if the world had gone deaf and dumb. Late at night, William says, the voice of the mill had something weird in it like a human moan, and he refused to explore it alone. The windows of the mill were powdered with floating meal, and its corners festooned with flour-laden cobwebs.
When he visited some relatives, William became so homesick that he drank huge amounts of water at dinner to keep from sobbing, to the alarm of his relatives. When he returned home, his family greeted him with exaltation, and his mother feted him like an honored guest.
Eventually, the Howells moved away, though young William, no longer young and more famous as William Dean, came back to visit the old place once more. He found the mighty trees gone, and a strange new house in place of his log cabin. Everything seemed smaller, and the once frightening gristmill was dwarfed and decrepit. Even the water that powered the mill, which William had loved to swim in, seemed old.
Available at Open Library:
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL69101...
The move was not auspicious. Both elder and younger William herded their cow out to their new place, a twelve-mile walk that ended at night, only to discover once they arrived that their cow had disappeared and headed right back to the old house. The herdsmen had been too busy discussing literature and philosophy during their long trek to pay attention to their duties. The family attempted to raise geese, only to discover the nuisance of trying to find where they had made their nests. Young William was even bitten on the nose by an angry goose while robbing it of its eggs. The senior William covered the walls with old newspapers, and his son complained that one of the stories broke off right at a point where it would tantalize him forever.
William slept in a loft and could see stars through cracks in the roof. Sometimes on winter mornings he stepped barefoot into snow that had drifted onto the floorboards, but these events were enough of a novelty that they did not bother him. The fireplace was a cavernous maw a full six feet wide and three feet deep. The family would cook their bacon and steaks over huge piles of hickory wood, and young William says the taste of that meat was unforgettable. The family inherited a pair of pigs from the previous owners of the place, who by their eagerness to enter the cabin indicated that they were apparently used to basking themselves by the warm fireside. Evicted, they spent their nights outside the chimney at its base, quarreling with each other over the choicest spot. Meanwhile, the family roasted their faces in front of the fire and froze their backs and feet from a draft that came from a door that never shut squarely.
The Howells' mother was not exactly pleased by this rude life, but William says that he and his brothers, being boys and thus natural savages, took to it immediately. The boys hunted game with a smooth-bore musket, an exercise in which Howells says, "The eldest did the shooting, and left the others to rush upon him as soon as he fired with tumultuous cries of 'Did you hit it? Did you hit it?' Usually, he had not hit it."
Young William read books ranging from Longfellow to "Simon Girty, the Renegade," while the gristmill close by made 'music for us night and day.' On Sundays when it was shut down, it was as if the world had gone deaf and dumb. Late at night, William says, the voice of the mill had something weird in it like a human moan, and he refused to explore it alone. The windows of the mill were powdered with floating meal, and its corners festooned with flour-laden cobwebs.
When he visited some relatives, William became so homesick that he drank huge amounts of water at dinner to keep from sobbing, to the alarm of his relatives. When he returned home, his family greeted him with exaltation, and his mother feted him like an honored guest.
Eventually, the Howells moved away, though young William, no longer young and more famous as William Dean, came back to visit the old place once more. He found the mighty trees gone, and a strange new house in place of his log cabin. Everything seemed smaller, and the once frightening gristmill was dwarfed and decrepit. Even the water that powered the mill, which William had loved to swim in, seemed old.
Available at Open Library:
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL69101...
September 9, 2022
Found this e-book on Barnes & Noble instead:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/my-y...
(The Amazon link went to a blank page with a picture of a dog.)
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/my-y...
(The Amazon link went to a blank page with a picture of a dog.)
December 1, 2023
I like the writing of William Dean Howells, enjoyed this short book on his memories of his log cabin home. He draws on his memory of family, neighbours, occupations and his boyhood to create an entertaining era in his life. A heartfelt read for cozy times.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews