William Dean Howells's Periodical Time

Thompson, Graham

Abstract

© 2019 by Arizona Board of Regents. This essay uses the example of William Dean Howells to redefine periodical time and suggest new ways in which extraliterary time manifests itself in literary form and content. Howells spent his early life typesetting for periodicals. Here he first encountered periodical time's key component parts: the human time of periodical labor and the paradoxical nature of periodical temporality. In A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889) he later wrote a novel in which a periodical is the major protagonist. The essay argues that Howells's experience of periodical time coincided with his formative experience of extraliterary time and that the two come together to shape the literary time of A Hazard of New Fortunes.

Citation

Thompson, G. (2019). William Dean Howells's Periodical Time. Arizona Quarterly, 75(4), 77-106. https://doi.org/10.1353/arq.2019.0021

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 25, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Dec 6, 2019
• Publication Date: Dec 6, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jun 25, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 26, 2019
• Journal: Arizona Quarterly: a journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory
• Print ISSN: 0004-1610
• Electronic ISSN: 1558-9595
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 75
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 77-106
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/arq.2019.0021
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1295980
• Publisher URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/742727
• Related Public URLs: https://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/arizona-quarterly-journal-american-literature-culture-theory
• Additional Information: Thompson, Graham. "William Dean Howells's Periodical Time." Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, vol. 75 no. 4, 2019, p. 77-106. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/arq.2019.0021.