Category: American Literature
This book has been prepared for publication as No. 4000, a “Memorial Volume,” of the “Tauchnitz Edition.” Perhaps it may be well to explain to American readers what the “Tauchnitz Edition” is and what a “Memorial Volume” is in this collection.
_New England Traits in the Seventeenth Century._--Did the people of New England in their earliest age begin to produce a literature? Who can doubt it? With their incessant activ...
31. Part 31_Mrs. Partington._--Benjamin P. Shillaber (1814-1890) was influenced by Sheridan even more strongly than was Saxe by the elder Hood. Mrs. Partington is America’s Mrs. Malaprop....
12. Part 12That he exhibited marked imperfections in style and technique no one will deny. He wrote too rapidly to attain to anything like elegance of style, and he is not infrequently obs...
4. Part 4Our early journalism, likewise, included publications of a more explicit literary intention than the newspapers; publications in which the original work was done with far greate...
30. Part 30_Other Essayists._--Finally, so far as essayists are concerned, some rapid review must be made of the novelists and the later poets who have not restricted themselves to the fie...
7. Part 7_Samuel Adams._--Samuel Adams was a man of letters, but he was so only because he was above all things a man of affairs. Of literary art, in certain forms, he was no mean master...
25. Part 25His course at Harvard over--for better or worse,--Lowell consigned himself, with misgivings and vacillation, to the study of law. An unfortunate love affair, the financial rever...
8. Part 8A great historian Hutchinson certainly was not, and, under the most favourable outward conditions, could not have been. He had the fundamental virtues of a great historian--love...
17. Part 17_Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward._--It is of course a far cry from Harte to Mrs. Phelps Ward, who came into notice in the East in the same year in which _The Overland_ was started....
3. Part 3_New England Verse-Writers._--Urian Oakes, born in 1631, was reared in the woods of Concord. The splendid literary capacity of this early American--this product of our pioneer a...
15. Part 15_Mayo_, _Kimball_, _and Wise_.--William Starbuck Mayo (1812-95), a New York physician, travelled in the Barbary States, and on returning home wrote two popular novels, “Kaloolah...
21. Part 21What will be the type of the American novel of the future? Probably it is rash to make any prediction; but one may venture to believe that the prevailing attitude of our future...
27. Part 27_Walt Whitman._--His belief in immortality, in the absolute and eternal value of each individual person and thing, constitutes the main element of permanence in the writings of...
5. Part 5More than in all other publications, it was in the fourth class of writings, namely, the political essays of the period, that the American people, on both sides of the great con...
19. Part 19_Francis Marion Crawford._--“The most versatile and various of modern novelists,” if Mr. Andrew Lang’s opinion is to be accepted, is Mr. F. Marion Crawford. Not only has he been...
10. Part 10A bodily affliction, the partial loss of sight in early manhood, has lent a peculiar personal interest to Prescott’s heroic performances. He has been called, with but little exa...
22. Part 22_Washington Allston._--The first poet of distinction who evidently represents the tradition of Wordsworth was the artist Washington Allston (1779-1843), a friend of Coleridge, a...
28. Part 28Space forbids any delay upon George Henry Boker (1823-1890), diplomat and dramatist, and his metrical drama, “Francesca da Rimini” (1856); or Francis Miles Finch (1827-1907), pr...
23. Part 23and are mostly tame and artificial. Though inferior in native talent to his brother-in-law, Washington Allston, Dana was more widely known as a writer, partly because of his abi...
11. Part 11_Charles Brockden Brown._--The history of the novel in America, therefore, properly begins with Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), who has been called “the first professional m...
20. Part 20_Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood._--Mary Hartwell Catherwood (1847-1902) made a name for herself with some very successful historical romances of the French and Indian Wars and Fr...
13. Part 13More able critics than one have pronounced “The Blithedale Romance” the most perfect of Hawthorne’s stories. Although he wrote to George William Curtis that the story had essent...
32. Part 32_Henry Clay._--Slightly the senior of Benton, Henry Clay (1777-1852) was in public life for an even longer time. By birth he was a Virginian. In the face of early hardship he ro...
36. Part 36_Samuel Stehman Haldeman._--Samuel S. Haldeman (1812-1880) attained a respectable place as a philologist, but was also known as a naturalist and an archæologist. He went to Dick...
14. Part 14Yet the fact remains that on a large number of these tales is the unmistakable stamp of genius. It may be well to recall the classification of them adopted by Messrs. Stedman an...
16. Part 16_Oliver Wendell Holmes._--The many-sided activity of Dr. Holmes extended to the writing of three novels--“medicated novels” they have been called, but the term does not apply to...
1. Part 1This book has been prepared for publication as No. 4000, a “Memorial Volume,” of the “Tauchnitz Edition.” Perhaps it may be well to explain to American readers what the “Tauchni...
34. Part 34_Phillips Brooks._--Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), after Henry Ward Beecher the greatest pulpit orator in America since the Civil War, was a native of Boston, nurtured in the best...
35. Part 35_Francis Lieber._--Francis Lieber (1800-1872), a native of Berlin and a Ph.D. of the University of Jena (1820), came to America virtually a political exile, and, though an arden...
18. Part 18_Charles Dudley Warner._--Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) belongs mainly with the essayists, but wrote a few novels that deserve to live. With Mark Twain he wrote “The Gilded...
37. Part 37_Joseph Henry._--Joseph Henry (1797-1878) was one of the most illustrious physicists of his day. Born and educated at Albany, New York, he began (1827) researches which resulted...
33. Part 33It is impossible in the space allotted to proceed further with recent or contemporary orators in political or secular life. One ought not to neglect such men as Carl Schurz (182...
38. Part 38In 1837 William E. Burton, the comedian, established in Philadelphia _The Gentleman’s Magazine_ to do for his sex what _Godey’s_ was doing for the ladies. Beginning with July, 1...
9. Part 9In writing his “Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada from the MSS. of Fray Antonio Agapida,” Irving recurred to a device which he had already employed with success. Fray Antonio...
6. Part 6_John Dickinson._--Among all the political writings which were the immediate offspring of the baleful Stamp Act dispute, there stand out, as of the highest significance, certain...
29. Part 29_Minor Transcendentalists._--Minor transcendentalists, and connected therefore with Emerson and Thoreau, were Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), and Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810-18...
26. Part 26_John Greenleaf Whittier._--In so brief a section, it has seemed impossible to offer more than a few scattered remarks on the poetry that arose in both the North and the South i...
24. Part 24Longfellow taught at Harvard from 1836 until 1854, with but one intermission, in 1842, when on account of his health he made his third trip to Europe. In 1843 he married Miss Fr...
43. Part 43[1] “There is a twofold liberty, natural, and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply,...
41. Part 41Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 97, 135, 161-2, 169, 243, 245, 246, 266, 267, 275-83, 284, 287, 289, 293, 297, 301, 306, 323, 325-6, 334, 337, 344, 372, 438, 439, 440, 441, 443, 44...
40. Part 4042. Part 4239. Part 39Of the other New York papers, _The World_ was founded in 1860, and during the years 1862-1876 was associated with the name of Manton Marble, one of the scholarly editors of his...