A Hazard of New Fortunes

Basil March leaves the comfort of Boston for New York to edit a new literary magazine, and Howells uses the move to spread a wide canvas of Gilded Age America across the crowded, striving city. Around the magazine gather figures from every corner of society: a self-made millionaire, his gentle idealistic son, a one-armed German socialist, a Southern gentleman of the old school, and the artists and writers who depend on them all. When a streetcar strike hardens the conflict between capital and labor, private quarrels turn suddenly public and tragic. Written in 1889 at the height of Howells’s realist project, the novel is his most ambitious, a searching look at money, class, and conscience in the modern American metropolis. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.