![]() ![]() To the inquisitive visitor eager to conjecture just in how far the volumes on the shelves-and not merely those Howells chose to put on display for us there-correspond with the ones penned by the tour guide himself, the “anxiety of influence” conveyed in above passage must seem a veritable invitation to linger long after the echoes of the author’s anecdotes, charming though they may be, have given way to thought-conjuring silence. I hope I shall always be able and willing to learn something from the masters of literature and still be myself, but for the young writer this seems impossible. That it was a long time before I found it best to be as like myself as I could, even when I did not think so well of myself as of some others. ![]() “I have now no reluctance to confess,” Howells continues, ![]() “I have never greatly loved an author without wishing to write like him,” William Dean Howells remarks as he ushers us into his private library for the engaging excursion that is My Literary Passions (18). Harry Heuser Passion and the Individual Talent A Trollope among the Brahmins?: Howells’s Rise of Silas Lapham and the Reform of the Fallen Novel ![]()
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