Noting the "documentary" and truthful value of Howells's work, Henry James wrote "Stroke by stroke and book by book your work was to become, for this exquisite notation of our whole democratic light and shade and give and take, in the highest degree documentary."[29] The late 19th-century English novelist George Gissing read two of Howells's works, The Shadow of a Dream and A Fearful Responsibility, calling the latter "inane triviality".[30] Bliss Perry considered a knowledge of his work vital for an understanding of the American provincial novel and believed that "he has never in his long career written an insincere, a slovenly, or an infelicitous page."[31] Mark Twain considered Howells not merely unusually talented as a writer but in fact superlatively so.[32]
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