William Dean Howells was known as the "The Dean of American Letters." He died in 1920. I wonder who would have that title now?

Howells lived at 1 Washington Square in New York City and was born March 1, 1837.

In a letter to Charles Eliot Norton dated April 6, 1903, he wrote, "The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all."