Years of My Youth

After the Civil War William Dean Howells served for 15 years as Assistant Editor and then Editor of the prestigious 'Atlantic' Magazine. For the remainder of the 19th Century he was a prolific and respected novelist. 'Years of My Youth' is his remembrance of his early years in Ohio, which he published in 1916 near the end of his life. The book spans the period from his earliest memories until his early 20s, at the beginning of the Civil War. The book is an unusually reflective chronicle that richly portrays the culture and issues of the 1840s and 1850s in the American Midwest. - Summary by Ted Lienhart