How did Henry James and William Dean Howells contribute to American realism?

Henry James and William Dean Howells were pivotal figures who inaugurated the era of American realism. Their collaboration began when Howells, as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, recognized James’s talent and became his friend, mentor, and regular publisher.123

William Dean Howells championed realism by depicting the American scene with honesty, focusing on middle-class life and the social and economic shifts of his time. He sought an objective aesthetic distance in his work, avoiding the potential distortions of biased narrators to provide an unembellished vision of reality.24

Henry James shared the realist commitment to presenting reality but integrated it with a focus on aesthetic experience and psychological depth. He utilized a "central intelligence"—a character through whose perspective the story is filtered—to capture the impressions of events on the mind. While his work often explored the clash of values between the United States and Europe, his sophisticated technique bridged 19th-century realism and 20th-century modernism. Together, they established a literary movement that sought to document the world as it truly was.541