Herman Melville (1819-1891) stopped writing fiction after the publication of The Confidence Man: His Masquerade ] in 1857; as he entered his forties, he turned to poetry as his literary avocation. His first published book of poems was Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), a meditation on the Civil War in short lyric and narrative verses, and a work as ambitious and rich as any that issued from his pen. Melville was well acquainted with the war. He made many trips south to visit his cousin Henry Gansevoort, a Union officer--on one such trip, he was active in an...
Herman Melville (1819-1891) stopped writing fiction after the publication of The Confidence Man: His Masquerade ] in 1857; as he entered...
In 1832, Ralph Waldo Emerson had come to a critical pass. He had lost his wife and was on the brink of leaving his career as a minister. In this reduced state he traveled to New Hampshire, where he made his famous decision to pursue wholeness--in his life and in his writing. This book reveals how Emerson went about achieving this purpose--and how he conceived a uniquely American literary practice.
Central to this project were the aims and methods of natural science, which Emerson discovered in spectacular form at the Museum of Natural History (Jardin des Plantes) in Paris exactly a...
In 1832, Ralph Waldo Emerson had come to a critical pass. He had lost his wife and was on the brink of leaving his career as a minister. In this re...
