Article Discussion

Thanks for a nice piece on a fascinating minor figure in American history. Given that Howells’s early connection with Campbell is described, it might be worthwhile to also note his eventual conversion to Swedenborgianism. His son comments often about his father’s deep rooting in Swedenborg’s thought and it spurred the son to read Swedenborg off-and-on for all of his adult life. The father also published a Swedenborgian periodical for a time, called “The Retina,” which was especially devoted to utopianism and Fourierism that was then popular among social visionaries (and though controversial included a large number of Swedenborgian adherents).

I think Howells’s religious perspectives were a key part of his political worldview and should be noted.

Didn’t the William Cooper Howells family live in Ashtabula, Ohio, where William Cooper Howells was editor of the Ashtabula Sentinel?

Didn’t his son, William Dean Howells, author of The Rise of Silas Lapham, live in Ashtabula, Ohio as a youngster?