Volume 49, Number 2 · February 14, 2002
Anguish of a New York Liberal
By Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
William Dean Howells's A Hazard of New Fortunes, published in 1890, is the first memorable novel about New York City.[*] Earlier novelists had touched on aspects of the city; Melville in particular had searing insights in Pierre and in short stories like 'Bartleby the Scrivener.' And there was, of course, Henry James's Washington Square. But no one before Howells had sought to capture the teeming, heterogeneous, multifarious, high-tension city on a single great canvas.
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