[Emerson, Mary Moody] Phyllis Cole,
MARY MOODY EMERSON AND THE ORIGINS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM: A Family History.
NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK. (NY: Oxford University Press, 2002).
370 pages.
~~~ "In this magisterial work of feminist archaeology, Phyllis Cole recovers Mary Moody Emerson’s life in the contexts of late New England Calvinism, the Emerson family, women’s opportunities in the early republic and Mary’s own crusty personality."
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[Emerson, Ralph Waldo] Hodder, Alan D.,
EMERSON'S RHETORIC OF REVELATION:
Nature, the Reader, and the Apocalypse Within.
Pennsylvania State University Press. 1989, NEW copy. Hardcover with dust jacket. Notes, index, 170 pages. Emerson's Nature and its links with the Christian Bible, specifically the Book of Revelation. OUT OF PRINT.
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[Emerson, Ralph Waldo] Robert D. Richardson, Jr.,
EMERSON: The Mind on Fire.
NF/NF. Hardcover with dust jacket. A nice, clean copy, with jacket in mylar.
With a frontispiece by Barry Moser. University of California Press, 1995. First Edition. Engravings, photographs, genealogies, chronology, principal sources, notes, index, 671 pages. ~~~ From Publishers Weekly: "The maverick intellectual life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) is the focus of this imposing, highly erudite biography. In 1832, Emerson resigned his Boston ministry to pursue a career as an essayist, orator and poet, delivering more than 1500 lectures in his lifetime, including `The American Scholar' (1837), and publishing essays such as 'Nature' (1836) and 'Representative Men' (1850). As America's foremost prophet of individual experience, he was also a founder of the Transcendentalist Club, editor of the transcendentalist magazine, The Dial, and spokesman for many reformist causes. Drawing on unpublished personal journals, correspondence and lectures, Richardson (Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind) charts, in exacting detail, the minutia of Emerson's daily life in Concord, Mass., and extensive travels; the literature and philosophy he read over several decades and how his reading shaped his steadily evolving intellect. Although the nuances of Emerson's personality are eclipsed by textual analysis, Richardson balances the often chilling puritanism of Emerson's writing with a portrait of the man as hungry for friendship, maintaining close relationships with Carlisle, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and Margaret Fuller; and whose icy doctrine of individualism reflects the loneliness caused by the premature deaths of his beloved first wife, his two younger brothers and numerous friends."
~~~~ From
Library Journal: "Using freshly available materials on Emerson, Richardson here fashions a lively intellectual biography of the 'sage of Concord.' In exacting detail, the author traces the development of Emerson's great imagination from his early student days at Harvard to his later associations with Coleridge and Carlyle. Through a study of Emerson's wide-ranging reading, Richardson reveals the origins of key Emersonian doctrines such as self-reliance, the transcendence of the soul, and the mind as an ever-erupting volcano. The great value of the biography lies in its exploration of the influences of Coleridge, Goethe, Madame de Stal, and Hindu thought on Emerson. While the intimate detail in which Emerson's life is examined is reminiscent of the pedantry of much late 19th-century American biography, Richardson offers a captivating account of the originality, creativity, and genius of the American Coleridge. This biography goes beyond John Mc-Aleer's Emerson: Days of Encounter.
~~~~ From
BookList: "Unlike Thoreau, Emerson never built a cabin on the shores of Walden Pond. But Richardson shows how Emerson's volcanic genius ignited flames of kindred enthusiasm in Thoreau, Whitman, Fuller, and other gifted Americans. Careful analysis of his vast reading reveals how Emerson drew inspiration from the world's classic literature yet maintained a fierce self-reliance that still defines one of the primary themes of our national culture. As in his biography of Thoreau, Richardson focuses principally on his subject's inner life, the life of his mind and spirit. But in this subtle portrayal of Emerson the thinker, the reader also sees the clearly limned portrait of Emerson the social activist, outraged by slavery and by oppressive Indian policies. Nor is the focus so narrowly cerebral that the reader does not feel the personal tragedy in the deaths of Emerson's first wife and son. Indeed, by referring to many previously unavailable private letters and manuscripts, Richardson sheds light on both Emerson's emotions and his intellect. A masterful work, this biography will attract the attention of scholars and serious general readers for decades."
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Fresonke, Kris,
WEST OF EMERSON: The Design of Manifest Destiny.
NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, 213 pages.
~~~ Where did American literature start? The familiar
story of Emerson and Thoreau has them setting up shop in
Concord, Massachusetts, and determining the course of
American writing. West of Emerson overhauls this
story of origins as it shifts the context for these literary
giants from the civilized East to the wide-open spaces of the
Louisiana Purchase. Kris Fresonke tracks down the texts by
explorers of the far West that informed Nature,
Emerson's most famous essay, and proceeds to uncover the
parodic Western politics at play in classic New England works
of Romanticism. Westerns, this book shows, helped create
"Easterns." ~~~ West of Emerson roughs up genteel
literary history: Fresonke argues for a fresh mix of American
literature, one based on the far reaches of American territory
and American literary endeavor. Reading into the record the
unexplored writings of Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, Stephen
Long, and William Emory, Fresonke forges surprising
connections between the American West and the American
visions emanating from the neighborhood of Walden Pond.
These connections open a new view of the politics--and, by
way of the notion of "design," the theological lineage--of
manifest destiny. Finally, Fresonke's book shows how the cast
of the American canon, no less than the direction of American
politics, came to depend on what design one placed on the
continent.
CONTENTS:List of
Illustrations / Acknowledgments / Introduction /
1. Natural Causes: The
Journals of Lewis and Clark ~~~ 2. Zebulon Pike, Federalist Gloom, and
Western Lands ~~~ 3. The Land without Qualities: Stephen Long and William
Emory ~~~ 4. Emerson's 1830s ~~~ 5. Emerson's Nature: West of Ecstasy ~~~ 6.
Thoreau and the Design of Dissent ~~~ Epilogue: The Case against the
Hamptons
~~~
"Aligning Emerson and Thoreau with exploration narratives by Lewis and Clark,
Pike, and others, West of Emerson realigns the standard map of regional
American literature. Focusing on New England, it reorients our understanding of
the literature of the west. Fresonke writes with grace and wit and sees the
rhetoric of both manifest destiny and New England Transcendentalism with new
eyes." ~~~Brook Thomas, author of American Literary Realism and the Failed
Promise of Contract
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[Fuller] Robert N. Hudspeth (ed), THE LETTERS OF MARGARET FULLER, Volume I: 1817-38. NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket. Cornell University Press, Second Printing, 1992 (first published 1983). Photographs of principal correspondents. Thoroughly annotated & indexed. 374 pages. "Margaret Fuller (1810-50) - pioneering feminist, Transcendentalist, critic, journalist, revolutionary - was one of the most influential women in the American literary circles of her day. Her many letters - of which nearly a thousand have survived - constitute an autobiography of her intellectual and emotional life. This volume is the first in a major new series that, when completed, will make available all of the extant letters. The first letters in Volume I are those of a seven-year-old child; the last were written by an uncommonly well-educated woman ready for a larger challenge than schoolteaching could offer her. The letters tell the story of her work with Amos Bronson Alcott and his experimental Temple School, of the early days of her friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson, of the beginnings of her life as a writer, and of her important work as translator and critic of Goethe."
Currently in print at $57.95.
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$25.00
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Hawthorne, Nathaniel,
THE SCARLET LETTER (Signature Classics). NEW copy. Hardcover. Trident Press International, 298 pages. "As she emerges from the prison of a Puritan New England town, Hester Prynne defies the dark gloom much as the rose blooms against the prison door. With her illegitimate baby, Pearl, clutched in her arms and the letter A - the mark of an adulteress - embroidered in scarlet thread on her breast, Hester holds her head high as she faces the malice and scorn of the townsfolk. Her powerful, bittersweet story is an American classic that continues to touch the hearts of modern readers with its timeless themes of guilt, passion and repentance."
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 [Hawthorne] John Dolis, THE STYLE OF HAWTHORNE’S GAZE: Regarding Subjectivity. University of Alabama Press, 1993. NEW copy. Hardcover with dust jacket, still in shrinkwrap. From Booknews: "Dolis contends that Hawthorne's interest in methods of representation can be compared to and prefigures the work of Baudelaire, Cezanne, and later the cubists. Likewise, he shows how the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Freud, Lacan, and Derrida can provide fresh insights into Hawthorne's perception of and representation of reality."
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[Hawthorne] Edwin Haviland Miller, SALEM IS MY DWELLING PLACE: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. VG.VG. Hardcover, with dust jacket in mylar. University of Iowa Press, 1991. First Edition. Forty-none photographs and nine drawings, notes, bibliography, index, 596 pages. ~~~ From Kirkus Reviews: "Major biography of 'America's first great storyteller,' meticulously researched and admirably written by N.Y.U. English professor Miller (Melville: A Biography, 1975). Born in 1804, Hawthorne belonged to the same generation as Poe, Melville, and Whitman -— that is, the first generation of American writers who sought to endow their work with an explicitly American tone and sensibility. The son of a sea captain, with family roots in Massachusetts reaching back to the early 17th century, Hawthorne was raised amid the bleak certitudes of Calvinist New England, a world as self-contained and harsh as the rocky coast of his native Salem. Introspective and melancholy as a child, he grew up an intensely secretive and reclusive man, distant from all but his wife and few close friends. Miller is prescient enough to discern the Byronic qualities of Hawthorne -— the restless awkwardness, the childish solitude typical of fatherless sons—that set him apart from most of his New England contemporaries (Emerson, for example, or Longfellow) and mark him, along with Poe, as one of the few genuine Romantics ever seen in America. We are given a careful and accurate portrayal of Hawthorne's various incarnations: the sensitive youth, the troubled Utopian (Hawthorne spent six unhappy months at Brook Farm), the awkward suitor, the distant father, the literary and political schemer. What emerges most strongly from Miller's splendid chronicle is the degree to which Hawthorne's own development coincided with the birth of America's literary culture. The best, and most thorough, biography yet of Hawthorne, setting the standard against which all others will be measured."
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Irving, Washington (Anthony Brandt, ed),
THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE.
(National Geographic Society).
NEW copy. Trade PAPERBACK. 290 pages.
~~~ Captain Benjamin L. E. Bonneville left the east for California in May of 1832.
No one heard from him, and many people assumed he was either a deserter, or dead. Three
years later he returned. Washington Irving met
Bonneville, bought the rights to his journal and, after editing it and recasting
it in the third person, published it. It is probably the most literate, readable
description of the fur trapper era.
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Irving, Washington (Patricia A. Pingry, ed),
THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW.
(Candy Cane Press).
NEW copy. Hardcover with dust jacket. Illustrated by Russ Flint. 64 pages.
~~~ This edition begins with a brief biography of Irving which includes the history
of the story itself, an Irving portrait, and a photograph of his home,
Sunnyside. An introduction of the main characters in the story is offered with a
picture of each along with an explanation of their importance in the story. The
Legend itself has been divided into short chapters for easier reading by today's
child, but the text remains Irving's original, from his 1848 revised edition.
These new chapter titles reflect the tongue-in-cheek style which pervades the
story. Likewise, Russ Flint's rich oil paintings continue the facetiousness of
Irving's writing style. This wonderful book will grab children by its fanciful
plot, the fear of Ichabod, and the fury of the Headless Horseman.
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$1500.00
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Irving, Washington,
WORKS OF WASHINGTON IRVING, KNICKERBOCKER EDITION, ILLUSTRATED, IN 27 VOLUMES.
(NY: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1870-71). 12mo, 5 1/4" x 7 1/2", 27 volumes. Nicely bound in 3/4 green
morocco over marbled sides with matching end papers and page edges;
panelled spines with five raised bands,
gilt floral decoration,
and gilt lettering. 183 illustrations, mostly engravings, including engraved title pages and two
manuscript facsimiles.
For complete descriptive list of individual volumes, with photographs,
click here.
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(Judd), Hathaway, Richard D.,
SYLVESTER JUDD'S NEW
ENGLAND.
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981., F/F, new, unopened. Extensive
notes, bibliography, index, 362. Biography of Unitarian minister and novelist,
Sylvester Judd (1813-1853), a colleague of Emerson's and friend of Jones Very.
(Originally in print at $35, now out of print).
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Kasson, Joy S.
ARTISTIC VOYAGERS:
Europe and the American Imagination in the Works of Irving, Allston, Cole, Cooper, and Hawthorne.
Greenwood Press, 1982, Contributions in American Studies, No. 10., Fine, new,
unopened. In green boards without DJ as issued. Notes, bibliography, index, 206
pp. (In print at $49.95).
$35.00
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Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW: Poems and Other Writings
Library of America, 2000. NEW copy, Hardcover with dust jacket. 854 pages.
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Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth,
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW: Selected Poems
NEW copy; trade PAPERBACK.
(Penguin Classics)
389 pages.
~~~
This collection brings together Longfellow's best and most famous poems,
providing a complete overview of his versatile and multifaceted genius. All the
classic Longfellow selections, including A Psalm of Life, The Children's Hour,
and The Day is Done, are here, as well as lesser-known but equally worthy poems,
like The Cross of Snow, a sonnet written in memory of his second wife, who died
tragically in a fire. Also included, in their entirety, are his two long
narrative masterpieces, Evangeline and The Courtship of Miles Standish.
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[Melville]
Newton Arvin, HERMAN MELVILLE
Grove Press., NEW copy, TRADE PAPERBACK. 316 pages.
~~~~ "One of America's most enigmatic literary figures, Herman Melville lived a life full of adventure, hardship, and moral conflict. Known for his nautical escapades. Melville first went to sea in his early twenties, sailing to England and then Polynesia where he found himself fleeing from cannibals, joining a mutiny, and frolicking with naked islanders. His novels were, for the most part, unsuccessful and misunderstood, and later in life he had to accept work as a low-level customs agent to support his wife and children. His only close friend was Nathaniel Hawthorne to whom he dedicated Moby-Dick. Newton Arvin's eminently readable biography beautifully captures the troubled, often reclusive man whose major works include Typee, Omoo, Bartleby the Scrivener, Billy Budd, and his indisputable masterpiece, Moby-Dick." ~~~~ From Library Journal: "...Arvin's portrait of Melville snagged a National Book Award (NBA) in 1950 and is still a leading title on the sailor turned author..."
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Melville, Herman, MOBY DICK.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket. Castle Books, 2004. 725 pages. ~~~~
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
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[Melville]
Bryant, John, MELVILLE & REPOSE:
The Rhetoric of Humor in the American Renaissance. Oxford, 1993., NEW, a mint copy. Hardcover with dust jacket. Extensive notes, index. "John Bryant's book is a strong and significant argument for the centrality of humor in Melville's novels. The purpose of MELVILLE & REPOSE is dual: to ground the uses of romantic humor in Melville in sensitive readings of contemporaneous European and American writings, and to offer a definitive account of the comic as the shapi ng force of Melville's narrative voice throughout the major phase of his literary career." Currently in print at $78.
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 [Melville] Elizabeth Hardwick, HERMAN MELVILLE. NEW copy. Hardcover. Penguin (Penguin Lives Series), 2000. 161 pages. From Publishers Weekly: "The Penguin Lives series is a good one: casual but serious, artfully rendered criticism that is not hell-bent on footnotes and references,; the slender volumes are produced by critical writers who are also impressive creative minds in their own right. Melville, whose life story is aptly told by literary critic and novelist Hardwick (Bartleby in Manhattan), is not the most accessible of subjects for a short format like this. Though he was an immensely prolific creator of novels, short fiction, poetry, letters and journals, and though he was one of the most important American writers, his life was barely public enough for any biographer to nail him down. His career is also too complicated to fit into any simple 'rise' and 'decline' paradigm--his genius is unevenly distributed across his works. Nonetheless, 'there is a rueful dignity in his life and personal manner,' Hardwick writes. His family responded to him with a 'puzzled sympathy.' Hardwick gives a frank depiction of a depressive, often bitter man who weathered a constant struggle over income ('Dollars damn me,' he wrote), the suicide of a son and, possibly, according to Hardwick, doubts about his own heterosexuality; Melville never seemed to forgive the world for refusing to recognize Moby-Dick as a masterpiece during his lifetime. Through 12 brief chapters, many centered on fresh readings of Melville's works and others thematic ('Whaling,' 'Elizabeth,' 'Hawthorne'), Hardwick's own talent for metaphor and no-nonsense interpretation makes this an especially engaging critical account. Perhaps most importantly, Hardwick is able to convey both the complexity of the man as well as the inherent impossibility of the biographer's task to elucidate fully the life of a multifarious individual. 'He is a mystery,' she writes, 'no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man.' Still, this work is a delight to read."
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[Melville] Perry Miller, THE RAVEN AND THE WHALE: Poe, Melville, and the New York Literary Scene. NEW copy. TRADE PAPERBACK. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. 370 pages. "A social, cultural, and literary history of the New York literary battleground between 1833 and 1857. First published in 1956, The Raven and the Whale analyzes the social confusion around the works of authors such as Poe and Melville, stemming from the intense rivalry between major publishing firms." ~~~ OUT OF PRINT.
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[Melville]
Robert Penn Warren (ed) SELECTED POEMS OF HERMAN MELVILLE, A Reader's Edition. NEW copy. TRADE PAPERBACK. David R. Godine, Publisher, 2004. 465 pages. "Whitman and Dickinson are the two greatest American poets of the nineteenth century, but who is the third? Some critics say Whittier, others say Poe, and these days an increasing number say Herman Melville. The revaluation of Melville's poetry is due in large part to the influence of this landmark volume, for Melville the poet has never found a more judicious, eloquent, or persuasive champion than Robert Penn Warren.
First published in 1970, Warren's edition remains the most comprehensive selection of Melville's poetry ever presented. It brings together the best of the Civil War poems from Battle-Pieces (1866), the portraits of sailors from John Marr (1888), and the autumnal lyrics from Timoleon (1891), as well as poems uncollected during Melville's lifetime. Central to the selection are several self-contained passages from Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1876), a book-length work that Warren calls 'an important document of our modernity ... in fact, a precursor to The Waste Land, with the same central image, the same flickering contrasts of the past and the present, the same charade of belief and unbelief.'
Warren introduces his selection with a valuable interpretive essay, and also provides copious textual and critical notes. It is a labor of love, this highly personal anthology: as Warren says in a preface, 'I have called this book 'A Reader's Edition,' and the reader I refer to is myself. The book may be regarded as a log of my long reading of Melville's poetry -- of my preferences and prejudices, my impressions and speculations, my curiosities and investigations.' But to our mind it is something more than that: it is the most important 'selected' since Malcolm Cowley's Portable Faulkner, a book that showcases an American master at his most powerful and in a light that changes our perception of his work forever."
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$45.00
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[Milton] Schulman, Lydia Dittler,
PARADISE LOST, AND THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC . Northeastern University Press , 1992. NEW copy. Hardcover with dust jacket, still in shrinkwrap. Notes, bibliography, index, 273 pages. Synopsis: "This book examines "how American readers understood and employed Milton's text before, during, and after the American Revolution. Contending that Milton's epic, which was written after the fall of the English Commonwealth, represented the author's 'reflections on the difficulties of creating and sustaining . . . governments that ultimately rest upon the virtue and self-discipline of their citizens', Schulman suggests that this embedded debate on republicanism made his poem a touchstone for secular politicians during the rise of the American republic." (American Literature). From Booknews: "Schulman argues that an important, overlooked key to uncovering the social and political subtext of Milton's (1608-1674) epic is its popularity and use in the early American
republic. At the same time, she demonstrates that an examination of the American reception of Paradise Lost contributes to an understanding of the ideological origins of the American Revolution." Annotation. From The American Historical Review: "For Schulman, the real point is Milton's argument that republican liberty, based on an educated, virtuous citizenry, must meet the challenge of controlling narrow self-interest through enlightened reason. . . . If Schulman inevitably fails to prove her thesis 'definitively,' she succeeds admirably in suggesting the complexity of Milton's role in the still lively debate over the soul of the republic. Her book is a strong contribution to that debate."
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$19.00
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[Milton] Stavely, Keith W. F.,
PURITAN LEGACIES: Paradise Lost and the New England Tradition, 1630-1890. Cornell University Press, 1995. NEW copy. PAPERBACK. Notes, index, 312 pages. Stavely presents "Milton's Paradise Lost as a model of the tensions inherent in mid-17th-century English Puritanism and in New England Puritanism through 1890. He {seeks to} show how Milton's portrayal of Adam, Eve, and Satan represents persistent Puritan conflicts between hierarchy and egalitarian individual autonomy and between rationality and enthusiasm. {In an attempt} to illustrate his thesis, Stavely studies the career of 18th-century Westborough, Massachusetts pastor Rev. Ebenezer Parkman and 19th-century Marlborough, Massachusetts newspaper editor Charles F. Morse."
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$40.00
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[Milton] Van Anglen, K.P.,
NEW ENGLAND MILTON: Literary Reception and Cultural Authority in the Early Republic
. Pennsylvania State University Press , 1993. NEW copy.
Hardcover with dust jacket, still in shrinkwrap. Notes, bibliography, index, 255 pages.
"This is a study of interpretations of Milton by New England intellectuals. "Interpreting
Milton to their advantage, Van Anglen argues, the New England elite used him in their
formulations of consensualist positions that became key elements of the developing American
cultural hegemony. At the same time, restive thinkers from Roger Williams to Walt Whitman
read Milton's works and career as more averse, thereby endorsing a more romantic, rebellious,
and democratic American spirit. After a . . . chapter surveying these conflicts and their
consequences between 1620 and the 1780s, Van Anglen focuses upon the Unitarians and the
transcendentalists in his remaining chapters. . . . {In} readings of {William Ellery}
Channing's review of Milton's De Doctrina, Emerson's essay 'John Milton,' his poem
'Uriel,' and his 'Divinity School Address,' and Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers and Walden {Van Anglen aims to} demonstrate how each
transcended the
dualism and contradictions of cultural authority." (New England Quarterly). Currently in print at $59.
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