William Dean Howells was admitted into the canon for the Parker Brothers 1897 edition of “Authors.”  He wasn’t in some of the later versions; tastes change.  His fellow authors this time around were James Russell Lowell, Robert Burns, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, William Shakespeare, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Victor Hugo, Sir Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Alfred Tennyson.  Hugo’s inclusion is surprising: all other “Authors” I’ve seen have been strictly English only.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)