Thomas Wentworth Higginson...

This book is based upon a course of lectures delivered during January of 1903 before the Lowell Institute in Boston. Their essential plan was that of concentrating attention on leading figures, instead of burdening the memory with a great many minor names and data. Various hearers, including some teachers of literature, took pains to express their approval of this plan, and to suggest that the material might profitably be cast into book form. This necessarily meant a good deal of revision of a k

When Shakespeare's Slender in “The Merry wives of Windsor” claims that his Cousin Shallow is a gentleman born, and may write himself Armigero, he adds proudly, “All his successors, gone before him, have done it, and all his ancestors that come after him may.”Slender really builded better than he knew; probably most of the applications at the Heralds' College in London, or at the offices of heraldic engravers in New York, are based on the principle he laid down. Its most triumphant application is

So far we have had to do with the strictly Puritan period of Colonial writing. The clergy were still for a long time to produce much of the best work; but by the beginning of the Eighteenth century took place that rise of the secular instinct which found its best expression somewhat later in Franklin; the humane instinct from which an essential part of any strong national literature must spring. At this particular period the impulse expressed itself in Three principal forms: the almanac, the dia

It is impossible to get the key to the early development of American literature without remembering that for Fifty years the nation had no well-defined capital city, at least for literary purposes; and it had only a series of capitals, even politically. In the very middle of the Nineteenth century, James Russell Lowell was compelled to write as follows: “Our capital city, unlike London or Paris, is not a great central heart.... Boston, New York, Philadelphia, each has its literature, almost more

During the course of the Revolution, as we have seen, Philadelphia's position of authority in literary matters became gradually less firm. The best verse of the period had come from Connecticut and New Jersey, and the best prose from New York and Virginia. The removal of the First Congress to New York in 1783 was a sign of waning political prestige; and when Six years later New York was chosen as the scene of the final organization of the American Republic, in April, 1789, the transfer of author

Some time before the impulse toward a graceful if shallow “Polite” literature exhausted itself in New York, a new kind of impulse had begun to make itself felt in New England. Up to the time of the Revolution an extraordinary ignorance of contemporary European literature and art had prevailed throughout the colonies. It is even said that America did not possess a copy of Shakespeare till a Hundred years after his death. In the Eighteenth century the colonists were by no means slow in getting the

We have now to consider the development of the only purely literary group of a high class which America has as yet produced. The best summary of their work is perhaps that made by the late Horace Scudder:— “It is too early to make a full survey of the immense importance to American letters of the work done by half a dozen great men in the middle of this century. The body of prose and verse created by them is constituting the solid foundation upon which other structures are to rise; the humanity

Before proceeding to deal with the individual members of the Concord group, we must understand what that “Tranenscendentalism” was with which we commonly associate their names. Perhaps One ought not to speak of understanding it, for it hardly understood itself. It was less a philosophy than an impulse, and our interest in it must now be due to the fact, First, that it was an impulse most useful to the America of that day, and, Second, that it was strongly felt by many of the leading spirits of t

We have had to speak, thus far, mainly of work done within Three somewhat narrowly restricted areas, with their respective centres in or about Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Before the outbreak of the Civil War a distinct type of literary energy manifested itself in the South, with Charleston, S. C., as its principal centre. In earlier days the South was the region in which literature had its slowest development. Even then, however, it possessed a single writer who, representing the best ty

It is not a great many years since the mere suggestion of any Western achievement in literature would have called out such anecdotes as belonged to the time when Senator Blackburn and Colonel Pepper of whiskeymaking fame are said to have been talking about horses at Washington; and Representative Crane of Texas asked them, “Why do you not talk of something else? Of literature, for instance, to improve your minds? I like poets,” he said, “Especially Emerson and Longfellow.”“Longfellow?”interrupte

In preparing the foregoing narrative, the attempt has been made from the outset to concentrate attention upon the few prominent writers and forces which have determined the development of American letters. It may be that some names have been wrongly subordinated or ignored; but the critic must, after all, discriminate according to his own judgment. There is a wise old Persian saying, “They came to shoe the Pasha's horses, and the beetle stretched out his leg to be shod.”The fundamental difficult

(Names of living authors are omitted.) Born in Wolcott, Conn., Nov. 29, 1799. He established a school for children in Boston, which was very successful until the press denounced it on account of the advanced ideas of the teacher. He then gave up the school and devoted his time to the study of philosophy and reforms, and later moved to Concord, Mass., where he founded the so-called “School of philosophy,” and became One of its leaders. He contributed to The Dial and published Tablets (1868), Conc

C. F. Richardson's American literature, 2 vols., G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1887. M. C. Tyler's History of American literature during the Colonial time, 2 vols., G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1878. M. C. Tyler's Literary history of the American Revolution, 2 vols., G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1897. Wendell's Literary history of America, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901. E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck's Cyclopedia of American literature, 2 vols., Charles Scribner, 1855. E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson's Library of American

Adams, John, 53, 56, 63, 221. Adams, Mrs., John, 52, 56. Adams, John Quincy, 66. Addison, Joseph, 84, 108, 257. Al Aaraaf, Poe's, 214. Alcott, Amos Bronson, 179, 180-182. Alcott, Louisa M., 126. Alden, Capt., John, 139. Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 264. All's well, Wasson's, 264. Americanism, 3, 159. “American Humor,” 242, 243. American poetical Miscellany, 68. Ames, Fisher, 4, 46. Ames, Nathaniel, 58. Ancient Mariner, Coleridge's, 68. A New home, Who'll follow? Mrs. Kirkland's, 240. Appeal for that