The Whole Family

by William Dean Howells and Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and John Kendrick Bangs and Alice Brown and Mary Stewart Cutting and Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman and Henry James and Elizabeth Garver Jordan and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Henry van Dyke Jr. and Mary Heaton Vorse and Edith Wyatt

First published: 1908
Reading level: Plain English
Price: Free

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About the book

"The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors" by William Dean Howells et al. is a collaborative novel serialized in 1907-08. Twelve different authors each wrote a chapter following a New England family disrupted by their daughter's engagement. What began as William Dean Howells's controlled experiment in literary realism spiraled into chaos when Mary E. Wilkins Freeman transformed a quiet spinster aunt into a vibrant, sexually magnetic woman—enraging fellow contributors and derailing the planned narrative in unexpected directions.