A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen, ‰mile Zola, Giovanni Verga, Benito Prez Gald³s, and, especially, Leo Tolstoy, which helped establish their reputations in the United States. He also wrote critically in support of American writers Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Emily Dickinson, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles W. Chesnutt, Abraham Cahan, and Frank Norris. It is perhaps in this role that he had his greatest influence.