Excerpt: "I have often had to criticize life for a certain caprice with which she treats the elements of drama, and mars the finest conditions of tragedy with a touch of farce. No one who witnessed the marriage of Arthur Glendenning and Edith Bentley had any belief that she would survive it twenty-four hours; they themselves were wholly without hope in the moment which for happier lovers is all hope." William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American realist author, literary critic, and playwright. Howells is known to be the father of American realism, and a denouncer of the sentimental novel. He was the first American author to bring a realist aesthetic to the literature of the United States. His stories of Boston upper crust life set in the 1850s are highly regarded among scholars of American fiction.