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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing) 539 1 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3 (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 88 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 1, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature: Early National Literature: Part I (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 58 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men 54 0 Browse Search
C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874. 54 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life 44 0 Browse Search
Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir 39 1 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book 38 0 Browse Search
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition. 38 0 Browse Search
Bliss Perry, The American spirit in lierature: a chronicle of great interpreters 36 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature. You can also browse the collection for Americans or search for Americans in all documents.

Your search returned 10 results in 7 document sections:

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature, Chapter 1: the Puritan writers (search)
toward the sane and cheerful recognition of the close relation which has always existed between American writing and English writing; and toward a careful weighing of the American authors in whom we properly take pride, upon the same scales which have served us in determining the value of British authors. With such ends in view, the present book will attempt, not to be a literary history of America, but simply to give a connected account of the pure literature which has been produced by Americans. It will not assume to be in any sense a minute literary cyclopedia of this work, but will rather attempt to select, as time selects, the best or representative names of each period in its course. The intrinsic literary importance of these writers will be considered, rather than their merely historical importance. Many minor names, therefore, which might properly be included in a summary of respectable books hitherto produced in America are here omitted altogether; and others are given
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature, Chapter 3: the Philadelphia period (search)
hiladelphia, there to remain until, in 1800, Washington became the permanent seat of government. A social centre. During and just after the Revolution, then, Philadelphia had the right to be regarded as the American metropolis. Public men gathered there from all parts of the country, and cultivated women came with them. French visitors, who soon became very numerous, criticised the city, found its rectangular streets tiresome and the habits of the people more rectangular still; but Americans thought it gay and delightful. Brissot de Warville declared that the pretensions of the ladies were too affected to be pleasing and the Comte de Rochambeau said that the wives of merchants went to the extreme of French fashions. The sarcastic Talleyrand said their luxury is frightful (leur luxe est affreux), leaving it an open question whether it was the amount of luxury to which he objected, or the kind of it. Mrs. John Adams, who had lived in Europe, complained of a want of etiquette,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature, Chapter 4: the New York period (search)
h to bring it into the courts and to spend much time and money in advertising his traducers. A far keener thrust, touching the very quick of Cooper's weakness, was Lowell's quiet remark: Cooper has written six volumes to show he's as good as a lord. With all his irascibility and his injudicious zeal about trifles, Cooper undoubtedly possessed disinterestedness and nobility of purpose. He never puffed his own work, or depreciated the work of others for personal reasons. At a time when Americans were disposed to confound hyperbole with patriotism, he spoke his mind with a truly patriotic candor. He knew honor and he wished to know justice. His faults were faults of temperament, and perhaps inevitable; for invention has never yet devised an inexplosive gunpowder. Cooper's personal unpopularity did not prevent his novels from acquiring immediate success in America and England, and a permanent fame far beyond the limits of the English tongue. It is said that his tales have been
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature, Chapter 5: the New England period — Preliminary (search)
the cultivation of polite letters. But whatever the pursuit of such a practical ideal might be able to do for the literary manners of a still provincial people, it could not lead to the production of an original and robust literature. What Americans needed toward the middle of the nineteenth century was to be given contact, not merely with the courtly pens of England and France, but with the great minds of all the world and of all times. It was this impulse toward wider contact, or culturiginal contribution to American letters. Women who wrote. The same disappearance of secondary figures applied to the women of that period. Lydia Maria child. There was Lydia Maria Child, for instance, whose Appeal for that class of Americans called Africans was the first anti-slavery appeal in book form; and had very marked influence on her younger contemporaries. Mrs. Child's Letters from New York were so brilliant as to be ranked with similar work of Lowell's for quality, but ha
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature, Chapter 6: the Cambridge group (search)
e-Mer had attained moderate success, but Hyperion, Longfellow's second and final prose work of importance, was destined to attract far more attention. This was due largely to the new atmosphere of German life and literature which it opened to Americans. The kingdom in which Germany ruled was not then, as now, a kingdom of material force and business enterprise, but, as Germans themselves claimed, a kingdom of the air; and into that realm Hyperion gave American readers the first glimpse. The, that at the very time when the author was at work upon Hyperion, his mind was undergoing a reaction toward the simpler treatment of more strictly American subjects. It must be remembered that Longfellow came forward at a time when cultivated Americans were wasting a great deal of sympathy on themselves. It was the general impression that the soil was barren, that the past offered no material, and that American authors must be European or die. Yet Longfellow's few notable predecessors had a
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature, Chapter 9: the Western influence (search)
and Mr. Howells were born east of the Missouri, which comes nearer than anything else to being the middle dividing line between the Eastern and Western halves of the continent. It was not many years ago that one of the most highly educated of Americans asserted positively that this nation could never have a great literature because no people had ever possessed one unless living within easy reach of the ocean. Time has shown that a vast inland country has also its resources and its stimulus; school of novelists; yet in reality they belong to widely different subdivisions. After all, Mr. James has permanently set up his easel in Europe, Mr. Howells in America; and the latter has been, from the beginning, far less anxious to compare Americans with Europeans than with one another. He is international only if we adopt Mr. Emerson's saying that Europe stretches to the Alleghanies. As a native of Ohio, transplanted to Massachusetts, he never can forego the interest implied in this do
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature, Index. (search)
, 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 class of Americans called Africans, Mrs. Child's, 125. Areopagitica, Milton's, 165. Arnold, Matthew, 266, 283. Arthur Gordon Pym, Poe's, 208. Arthur Mervyn, Brown's, 70. Astoria, Irving's, 240. Astronomical diary and almanac, Ames's, 58. Atlantic monthly, 106, 132, 133, 158, 162. Audubon, John James, 239. Austin, William, 187. Autocrat of the breakfast table, Holmes's, 157, 158. Bancroft, George, 87, 111, 117, 143. Barclay of Ury, Whittier's, 147. Barlow, Joel, 38. Battle of the