# A Hazard of New Fortunes — Character guide

> Key figures in A Hazard of New Fortunes by William Dean Howells.

- [Angus Beaton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/beaton.md): Beaton drifts through the drawing rooms and studios of New York as a man of taste, talent, and no fixed purpose, courted by Fulkerson for the art department of Every Other Week even as he sneers at the enterprise. His on
- [Basil March](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/march.md): March leaves a comfortable, book-lined existence for the uncertain prospect of Every Other Week, drawn by Fulkerson's enthusiasm and his own unfulfilled ambitions. He is thoughtful, self-aware, and quietly torn between h
- [Mrs. March](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/mrs_march.md): Isabel March presides over the family's refined household and its move to New York with a mixture of wifely loyalty and unillusioned judgment. She takes Fulkerson's side against her husband's scruples, dismisses the noti
- [Fulkerson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/fulkerson.md): Fulkerson is the engine of the whole venture: he recruits March, courts Beaton, flatters Dryfoos, and arranges the disastrous dinner that brings Lindau and the magnate under one roof. His buoyant confidence and cynical r
- [Mr. Dryfoos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/dryfoos.md): Dryfoos has risen from the farm to a fortune and now wants a respectable literary property to crown his success, but he cannot quite comprehend the men of ideas his money has hired. Proud, touchy, and quick to take offen
- [Mr. Lindau](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/lindau.md): Lindau is a veteran of European revolutions and a translator of manuscripts for Every Other Week, hired out of gratitude and old friendship but incapable of softening his denunciations of the rich. His fierce, unbending 
- [Conrad Dryfoos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/conrad_dryfoos.md): Conrad works in the counting-room of his father's new magazine, Every Other Week, forever smoothing over the old man's explosions and gently excusing even the socialist Lindau. His mildness hides a fanatic's conviction: 
- [Christine Dryfoos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/christine_dryfoos.md): Raised on a farm and dropped into New York wealth, Christine meets the city's indifference with impassioned suspicion rather than humility, reading every caller as a fortune-hunter and every kindness as a maneuver. She r
- [Mela Dryfoos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/mela_dryfoos.md): Where her sister bristles, Mela fawns: delighted by Margaret Vance's politeness, eager to pry Beaton for gossip, she assumes the world will come to her because her father's money says so. She has none of Christine's vigi
- [Alma Leighton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/alma_leighton.md): Alma lives with her widowed mother in rooms the Leightons must let to make ends meet, and she studies drawing with a clear eye for both people and prices. When the Virginian Woodburns arrive to rent, she watches Miss Woo
- [Margaret Vance](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/margaret_vance.md): Margaret moves easily among artists, concerts, and fashionable charity, a girl of culture and conscience whose aunt mistakes conventionality for ideals. She visits the Dryfooses determined to let them patronize her, awar
- [Mrs. Mandel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/mrs_mandel.md): Mrs. Mandel manages the Dryfoos household and, more delicately, their entry into society, measuring Mrs. Horn's address and explaining that her standing is independent of money. She can make her charges understand a chan
- [Miss Woodburn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/miss_woodburn.md): Daughter of Colonel Woodburn, she lodges with the Leightons and becomes the household's resident charmer, her Virginia accent and dry wit delighting Mrs. Leighton and unsettling Basil March's circle. Beneath the cooing t
- [Mrs. Leighton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/mrs_leighton.md): She runs the household where the Woodburns and the Marches cross paths, and she measures every new lodger by whether they will do her daughters good. She is no sentimentalist, but she feels for Beaton even as she sees Al
- [Colonel Woodburn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/colonel_woodburn.md): He is the resident 'real live author' of the Leighton household, a Confederate veteran whose aristocratic airs and old-fashioned opinions make him both comic and faintly tragic among the Northern boarders. His daughter M
- [Mrs. Horn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/mrs_horn.md): A wealthy, fashionable society matron.
- [Mr. Wetmore](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/mr_wetmore.md): An artist friend of Beaton and the Leightons.
- [Mrs. Dryfoos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters/mrs_dryfoos.md): The quiet, pious wife of Mr. Dryfoos.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_hazard_of_new_fortunes_se/characters