The Whole Family

The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors (1908) is a collaborative novel told in twelve chapters, each by a different author. This unusual project was conceived by novelist William Dean Howells and carried out under the direction of Harper's Bazaar editor Elizabeth Jordan, who (like Howells) also wrote one of the chapters.

Howells's idea for the novel was to show how an engagement or marriage would affect and be affected by an entire family. The project became somewhat curious for the way the authors' contentious interrelationships mirrored the sometimes dysfunctional family they described in their chapters.

Other than Howells himself, Henry James was probably the best-known author to contribute. Howells had been unable to persuade Mark Twain to join the proect.The novel was serialized in Harper's Bazaar in 1907–08 and published as a book by Harper's in late 1908.

The novel features a middle-class family of New England who are active in the silverplate industry. Their college-educated daughter returns home with an unsuitable fiancé, setting in motion the events of the novel. By its end, she has instead married a college professor. The couple sail to Europe for their honeymoon.