William Dean Howells 
Indian Summer 

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was born in 1837 in Martins Ferry, Ohio, one of ten children to editor and printer, William Cooper Howells. William’s early education in the printing office led him to a job as a compositor on the ‘Ohio State Journal’ at age fourteen, and a successful career as an author by his early twenties. His notoriety comes largely from his fifteen years working at ‘The Atlantic Monthly’ as assistant and chief editor, where he influenced the careers of writers like Mark Twain and Henry James. Howells wrote novels, plays, essays, poems, reviews and travel pieces that touched on every day people and their experiences. ‘Indian Summer’ is about Theodore Colville, a young man who becomes involved with two woman, the younger of which is enamored with sentimental romance novels. This satirical novel reveals Howells’ attitudes on the dangers of sentimentalism and the relationship between motive and consequences.