William Dean Howells is one of the most strategically important figures in the history of American literature. Howells was born in a small town in Ohio, Martin's Ferry, the son of a printer-journalist, in whose office he learned to be a typesetter as well as a writer. It is generally agreed by literary historians that Howells' move from Boston to New York in 1885 marked more than the end of an epoch and the beginning of another in his own life. Europe had meant a lot to Howells ever since he had lived there and probably before, but its power over him increased while he lived in the American city which in many ways is closer to Europe than any other. Howells' correspondence reveals that he did not recognize any progress in Abraham Cahan's work from Yekl, which he approved, to Levinsky, of which he was much more critical.