This 1886 novel introduces Howells's conceptderived from Tolstoyof moral complicity, which would play a large part in his fiction from this point on.  A poor farmer, Lemuel Barker, comes to Boston with dreams of becoming a poet.  Instead, his naïveté leaves him an easy mark, and he is soon destitute.  A minister, Sewell, is forced to consider his own complicity in Barker's fate . . . and by extension that of all his less-fortunate fellows.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American novelist and critic.  He edited theAtlantic Monthly from 1871-1881, where he championed literary realism and advanced the careers of such important American writers as Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Henry James.  His best known novel isThe Rise of Silas Lapham (1885).