William Dean Howells and the Failure of the Urban Picturesque

HE late nineteenth century marked a turning point in representations of the city. Mid-century Gothic exposes, such as George Lippard's The Quaker City (1845) and George Foster's New York By Gas-Light (1850)-which depicted the dangers of rural migration primarily through tales of poor, innocent girls-gave way to late-nineteenth-century accounts that focused less on brothels and saloons than on the pleasures of strolling through immigrant neighborhoods. Alongside the earlier fear of the unfamiliar emerged a fascination with the city as the new frontier of modernity, where cultural heterogeneity was perceived as thoroughly American.' Through this shifting urban landscape strolled William Dean Howells, whose daily rambles through the streets of New York brought him into contact with the bustling life of the city-struggling artists in Mott Street, ballad-sellers in the Bowery, and immigrants throughout Lower Manhattan. Like Walt Whitman before him, Howells took pleasure in the dime-museums, circuses, and theaters, attractions he rarely encountered in Boston.' Having moved from Boston to New York in 1889, Howells considered the American metropolis to be the most interesting place in the country, even in the world.3 In a letter to Henry James in 1900oo, he described

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