A Sleep And a Forgetting

THE ART OF THE NOVELLA Nowhere in the prodigious output of William Dean Howells is there an example more poignant of his heart-felt dedication to the realist movement than this achingly suspensfull novella. The story centers on a young "alienist"-a psychologist-who meets a young woman who, at subsequent encounters, has no recollection of him. The doctor launches a psychological investigation that appears to be based upon the most painful memories of the author himself- Howells had recently experienced the loss of a beloved adult daughter (from what appears to have been anorexia) and the institutionalization of another for "emotional collapse." The story's surprising ending reveals not only the author's deft sense of craftsmanship, but speaks movingly to his enduring faith in the sublime power of literature.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio in 1837. The son of an itinerant newspaper editor, he began printing and typesetting work at an early age. In 1866 he started as an assistant editor for The Atlantic Monthly, becoming editor by 1871, a position he held until 1881. His own literary reputation took off a year later with the 1882 publication of the realist novel A Modern Instance. The Rise of Silas Lapham, Annie Kilburn, and A Hazard of New Fortunes followed. A close friend of Mark Twain and Henry James, he also wrote criticism and essays supporting such authors as Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Stephen Crane, and Emily Dickinson. He was one of seven chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1904, and later became its president. He died in 1920