In Defense of Genius: Howells and the Limits of Literary History

Abstract

In early 1886, William Dean Howells fell into an ugly public debate with poet and critic Edmund Clarence Stedman. Carried out in pages of Harper's Monthly and New Princeton Review, this dispute started as a disagreement about origins of literary craftsmanship but quickly esca lated into a heated epistemological squabble about limits of historical knowledge. It began in March of that year, when Howells gave a mixed review to Stedman's Poets of America (1885), a history of American poetry. Though Howells conceded importance of Stedman's contribution to emerging discipline of American literary history, he openly mocked a few of Stedman's claims: his prediction of an American poetry revival and his staunch belief in genius, a category of achievement Stedman used with great liberality. Stedman was humiliated by Howells' published remarks, and he responded six months later with essay Genius, in which he feebly attempted to defend scholarly claims of Poets of America. Though two long-time friends visibly struggled to remain cordial, their strained politeness occasionally gave way to underhanded barbs: Howells, for ex ample, wryly remarked that genius was merely the fancy of those who hope that someone else will think they have it.1 This uncharacteristically prickly exchange generated so much attention at time that other periodicals? among them The Critic, Boston Gazette, and Penny Post?published articles about it, providing summaries of each man's arguments while studi ously avoiding taking sides. And though two men soon resumed their friendship and coll?gial rapport, neither was willing to let matter go or concede defeat: Howells reprinted much of his 1886 review in Criticism