Their Wedding Journey

Basil and Isabel March take a wedding journey from Boston to Niagara, Montreal and Quebec, and nothing happens: they look at things, argue mildly, and notice their fellow passengers. Howells edited The Atlantic and was the most powerful literary broker in America; this 1872 book was his manifesto in practice — the ordinary, exactly rendered, with no plot to help it — and the Marches came back in half a dozen later novels. Its 60 original illustrations have been carefully restored and coloured for this edition.