An Edition of William Dean Howells\u27 Literary Friends and Acquaintance With an Introduction Treating Literary Reminiscence as a Genre

Although the literary reminiscence is a highly specialized kind of autobiography, many of the problems encountered in autobiography are worth considering when one attempts to focus on the reminiscence. Before placing Literary Friends and Acquaintance into the broad stream of literary reminiscence that appeared in America in the latter part of the nineteenth century, I should like to consider the critical problems of the autobiographical mode and the relationship between autobiography and literary reminiscence. Then I should like to suggest an approach to the literary reminiscence and to consider several individual reminiscences using this approach