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Makers and Finders #1
The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865
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First published January 1, 1936
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About the author
Van Wyck Brooks
101 books11 followersVan Wyck Brooks was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, on February 16, 1886. His parents, Sally and Charles Brooks were well off, and as a result Van Wyck was able to get a good primary education. Van Wyck eventually ended up in Harvard University, from where he graduated in 1908.
Van Wyck Brooks became well known through his work as a literary critic, although he generally is not considered an author of literary works himself.
Brooks is also well known through his work as a historian of American literature during the 19th century, and he produced a series of studies, which were known and published as the “Makers and Finders” series.
One of his books, The Flowering of New England, won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1937.
Van Wyck Brooks became well known through his work as a literary critic, although he generally is not considered an author of literary works himself.
Brooks is also well known through his work as a historian of American literature during the 19th century, and he produced a series of studies, which were known and published as the “Makers and Finders” series.
One of his books, The Flowering of New England, won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1937.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 20, 2020
Van Wyck Brooks used to be a big deal. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner and a major critic, an influence on the emerging field of American Studies. The early American Studies scholars had a few goals in mind: combatting both right- and left- (but mostly left-) wing radicalism in American culture, proving America’s cultural weightiness as opposed to European stereotypes of cultureless Americans, and creating a sort of high-middlebrow American monoculture to incorporate immigrants, the working classes, and new generations into safely.
I don’t know how much Brooks actually participated in American Studies, which was a pretty well-organized (and CIA-backed) enterprise from the beginning; Brooks seems to have been an “independent scholar,” i.e. a rich guy who could do research, write, and get published by respectable outlets without institutional help. But the monoculture thing is definitely part of Brooks’ project in these two books. Between them, “The Flowering of New England” and “Indian Summer” cover a century of literary history in New England, the years between 1815 and 1915. They follow a sort of sine-wave pattern- rise, fallow period, lesser reconstitution, of New England influence over American culture, particularly but not solely writing.
But he doesn’t make straightforward arguments about why New England “flowered” or went fallow as it did, he doesn’t try to empirically measure New England’s literary influence, even qualitatively, and he only barely lays out a thesis to the books at all, and not in an introduction, where you figure it would go. He writes very flowingly and impressionistically, dedicating chapters to writers or artists and their circles in rough chronological order, stopping in at certain hot spots (Cambridge, Concord) from time to time. In the first book, “The Flowering of New England,” he puts a lot of emphasis on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, and it bleeds into his writing, both structurally and stylistically, not for the better. I never cared for either one, seeing them as individualistic phoney philosophers, jumped-up graduation speakers, and Brooks did not change my mind.
As it turns out, Brooks was borrowing heavily from German historian/pseudo-philosopher Oswald Spengler. He rejects Spengler’s racism (though his books aren’t free of patronizing attitudes to black people and Native Americans, and his literary New England is blindingly white), but uses something like his theory of how cultural spaces develop in history. “Culture cities” like Florence or Bruges in the Renaissance, Spengler argued, came from a concatenation of sources: a certain degree of wealth and power (not too much!), connection with “the soil,” meaning with a specific place, and a kind of spark of genius provided by rubbing those together with a broadly educated public, and hey presto! You’ve got yourself a “culture city.” Insofar as the model makes any sense and isn’t idealistic gobbledegook, it applies perfectly well to Boston/Cambridge/Concord in the nineteenth century, which did indeed have all of those things going for it (though I tend to think the real genius was Herman Melville, who get short shrift from Brooks, possibly because he bailed to New York when the opportunity came). Decline came in the post-Civil War era, when people (well, rich New Englanders, but that’s “people” as far as Brooks is concerned) gained interest in making money and marriages and lost interest in causes and greatness. This produced a sort of subsidiary bounce of genius as figures like the James brothers and Henry Adams portrayed and criticized this society, but in the end, we are left looking wistfully back at the genius of New England now eaten by the maw of modernity.
I read these books as part of a project on the intellectual history of New England, how it constituted (and constitutes) itself by the light of ideas. Brooks’ project here was part of a bid to make the literary history of New England part of a broader monoculture for America as a whole, a civilizing project for the unwashed masses, the kind of thing some of Brooks’ characters would take up. Obviously, I am not part of this project, nor am I especially sympathetic to it, though I do think people could benefit from looking at literature once thought “canonical,” both on its own merits and for historical purposes.
I guess what I got out of this was more archaeological than anything. The ruins of a lost civilization, or rather, two: the New England of the American Renaissance (scholars prefer the broader term, incorporating non-New England figures, than the “Flowering” metaphor Brooks used), and the mid-twentieth century literary Americanism project. It’s like you need to decode the latter before you can get at the former in Brooks’ work. This is basically pointless to the modern reader because others (Louis Menand, David Reynolds, probably loads more) cover much the same ground but don’t expect you to know or care who these triple-named Yankees are before they explain why. In Brooks, it’s assumed you know most of them and care. I try to imagine even scholarly friends of mine reading these books and I get the idea of a comical morass, like the begets of the Bible or the sludgier portions of the Silmarillion, though Brooks does have some nice turns of phrase. You can see the accomplishment here — I don’t know if I got this across, but the books are really exhaustive, as far as white upper-class New England literature goes — but I don’t think Van Wyck Brooks is going to make his way back from obscurity any time too soon. ***
I don’t know how much Brooks actually participated in American Studies, which was a pretty well-organized (and CIA-backed) enterprise from the beginning; Brooks seems to have been an “independent scholar,” i.e. a rich guy who could do research, write, and get published by respectable outlets without institutional help. But the monoculture thing is definitely part of Brooks’ project in these two books. Between them, “The Flowering of New England” and “Indian Summer” cover a century of literary history in New England, the years between 1815 and 1915. They follow a sort of sine-wave pattern- rise, fallow period, lesser reconstitution, of New England influence over American culture, particularly but not solely writing.
But he doesn’t make straightforward arguments about why New England “flowered” or went fallow as it did, he doesn’t try to empirically measure New England’s literary influence, even qualitatively, and he only barely lays out a thesis to the books at all, and not in an introduction, where you figure it would go. He writes very flowingly and impressionistically, dedicating chapters to writers or artists and their circles in rough chronological order, stopping in at certain hot spots (Cambridge, Concord) from time to time. In the first book, “The Flowering of New England,” he puts a lot of emphasis on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, and it bleeds into his writing, both structurally and stylistically, not for the better. I never cared for either one, seeing them as individualistic phoney philosophers, jumped-up graduation speakers, and Brooks did not change my mind.
As it turns out, Brooks was borrowing heavily from German historian/pseudo-philosopher Oswald Spengler. He rejects Spengler’s racism (though his books aren’t free of patronizing attitudes to black people and Native Americans, and his literary New England is blindingly white), but uses something like his theory of how cultural spaces develop in history. “Culture cities” like Florence or Bruges in the Renaissance, Spengler argued, came from a concatenation of sources: a certain degree of wealth and power (not too much!), connection with “the soil,” meaning with a specific place, and a kind of spark of genius provided by rubbing those together with a broadly educated public, and hey presto! You’ve got yourself a “culture city.” Insofar as the model makes any sense and isn’t idealistic gobbledegook, it applies perfectly well to Boston/Cambridge/Concord in the nineteenth century, which did indeed have all of those things going for it (though I tend to think the real genius was Herman Melville, who get short shrift from Brooks, possibly because he bailed to New York when the opportunity came). Decline came in the post-Civil War era, when people (well, rich New Englanders, but that’s “people” as far as Brooks is concerned) gained interest in making money and marriages and lost interest in causes and greatness. This produced a sort of subsidiary bounce of genius as figures like the James brothers and Henry Adams portrayed and criticized this society, but in the end, we are left looking wistfully back at the genius of New England now eaten by the maw of modernity.
I read these books as part of a project on the intellectual history of New England, how it constituted (and constitutes) itself by the light of ideas. Brooks’ project here was part of a bid to make the literary history of New England part of a broader monoculture for America as a whole, a civilizing project for the unwashed masses, the kind of thing some of Brooks’ characters would take up. Obviously, I am not part of this project, nor am I especially sympathetic to it, though I do think people could benefit from looking at literature once thought “canonical,” both on its own merits and for historical purposes.
I guess what I got out of this was more archaeological than anything. The ruins of a lost civilization, or rather, two: the New England of the American Renaissance (scholars prefer the broader term, incorporating non-New England figures, than the “Flowering” metaphor Brooks used), and the mid-twentieth century literary Americanism project. It’s like you need to decode the latter before you can get at the former in Brooks’ work. This is basically pointless to the modern reader because others (Louis Menand, David Reynolds, probably loads more) cover much the same ground but don’t expect you to know or care who these triple-named Yankees are before they explain why. In Brooks, it’s assumed you know most of them and care. I try to imagine even scholarly friends of mine reading these books and I get the idea of a comical morass, like the begets of the Bible or the sludgier portions of the Silmarillion, though Brooks does have some nice turns of phrase. You can see the accomplishment here — I don’t know if I got this across, but the books are really exhaustive, as far as white upper-class New England literature goes — but I don’t think Van Wyck Brooks is going to make his way back from obscurity any time too soon. ***
June 16, 2012
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1951346.html
explaining how New England in the early nineteenth century saw an extraordinary outburst of literary talent, which he attributes in part to the region developing its intellectual resources through Harvard and proximity to Europe, while at the same time it became increasingly politically and economically sidelined as the continent opened up, benefiting New York and points south. (This then of course doesn't explain why the era of literary excellence ended at the time of the Civil War, but perhaps the war itself is explanation enough.) I had not previously appreciated the literary importance of Concord, Massachusetts. As in his other book, which covers largely the same period but in the rest of the US, Brooks has a breezy and entertaining style telling us about all the connections between writers and other artists of the period; I felt also that he gave more attention to women writers (though none at all to non-whites) here. The most striking observation was that most schoolteachers across the entire country in the early nineteenth century came from New England, so it was very much setting the cultural pace for the new nation. (Another striking observation - Uncle Tom's Cabin had been translated into Welsh in three different editions before any of Charles Dickens or Walter Scott had appeared in that language.) Anyway, rounds out my political knowledge of the era nicely.
explaining how New England in the early nineteenth century saw an extraordinary outburst of literary talent, which he attributes in part to the region developing its intellectual resources through Harvard and proximity to Europe, while at the same time it became increasingly politically and economically sidelined as the continent opened up, benefiting New York and points south. (This then of course doesn't explain why the era of literary excellence ended at the time of the Civil War, but perhaps the war itself is explanation enough.) I had not previously appreciated the literary importance of Concord, Massachusetts. As in his other book, which covers largely the same period but in the rest of the US, Brooks has a breezy and entertaining style telling us about all the connections between writers and other artists of the period; I felt also that he gave more attention to women writers (though none at all to non-whites) here. The most striking observation was that most schoolteachers across the entire country in the early nineteenth century came from New England, so it was very much setting the cultural pace for the new nation. (Another striking observation - Uncle Tom's Cabin had been translated into Welsh in three different editions before any of Charles Dickens or Walter Scott had appeared in that language.) Anyway, rounds out my political knowledge of the era nicely.
October 8, 2017
Published in 1936, by the time my father bought (or more likely was given) a copy it was in its 19th printing. Sometime in my early 20s I delighted in reading this, a book of literary criticism miles better than the trash I had been forced to read in academic journals while an undergrad. Now, having let decades flow by, I have once again delighted in exploring Brooks and our mutual friends from New England.
Not only were my roots established in New England soil with my birth in New Britain, Conn., but my spiritual and literary underpinnings were established on writers such as Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville. Those worthies and more are approached here, not as revered Literary Figures, but as men thinking and writing and struggling to find and define identity in our new country. Van Wyck Brooks writes so well that I often, if finding myself alone excepting the cat, read long passages aloud. What a pleasure to read well written, well edited, well thought out prose; a whole book without any egregious grammatical errors, misused words, or trite constructions.
Incidentally, in finding my way to the proper place in Goodreads, I discovered Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for history with this effort. Good choice.
Not only were my roots established in New England soil with my birth in New Britain, Conn., but my spiritual and literary underpinnings were established on writers such as Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville. Those worthies and more are approached here, not as revered Literary Figures, but as men thinking and writing and struggling to find and define identity in our new country. Van Wyck Brooks writes so well that I often, if finding myself alone excepting the cat, read long passages aloud. What a pleasure to read well written, well edited, well thought out prose; a whole book without any egregious grammatical errors, misused words, or trite constructions.
Incidentally, in finding my way to the proper place in Goodreads, I discovered Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for history with this effort. Good choice.
October 16, 2017
Just a brilliant panorama of 19th century new england intellectualism written in captivating and poetic prose. From art to law to foreign travels, to poetry to philosophy to soulful transcendentalism, the book tells the birth growth development and evolution of the american intellectual in a time that saw profound luminaries and the growth of intellectual institutions. An amazing and hard to find book. Worthwhile for every library and a gentle source of American pride.
April 25, 2021
This one is a 5-course meal...just a really dense book, and I mean that in a good way. This is not just a great biography of the development of New England literature; it is a dense descriptive adventure about the development of New England as a whole. I was expecting something that focused almost entirely on the authors, but instead it talked about the authors and how they fit within the context of what was happening in the region. Just a superbly written piece, I don't think I've read anything this well-written in ages.
You can pick and choose chapters that interest you and still enjoy this one, but the best way to read this is chapter by chapter. I'm trying to read 50 books this year, and while I'm not rushing through anything, I'll still come back and give this one another read at a later date when I can take an extended stroll.
You can pick and choose chapters that interest you and still enjoy this one, but the best way to read this is chapter by chapter. I'm trying to read 50 books this year, and while I'm not rushing through anything, I'll still come back and give this one another read at a later date when I can take an extended stroll.
July 9, 2025
The Flowering of New England
Van Wick Brooks
This was a “duty read” for me. I'd known of Van Wick Brooks' magnum opus all my adult life with the intent of getting into it one day. As we know, there have been times in history when a seemingly ordinary town, given the right size, a sufficient amount of wealth – but not too much! – and some talent scattered about through the neighborhood – might burst into a Golden Age of commerce, of culture and education, and even enlightenment.
It began here at the close of the War of 1812. Boston, Cambridge and Concord saw their own culture blossom, commonly referred to as The New England Renaissance.
How did it happen? Here were an expat colonial people founded by stern Calvinist pilgrims, mostly pre-destined and condemned to fiery hell (including infant damnation) while the Elect Few were pre-chosen by a just God for heaven.
It did not last, fortunately. Readings from the Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) chopped away at the old, cold faith with hard logic. A revolution was fought and won – then capitalism and trade caught men's imagination. Water power made the first industrial mills possible while Yankee- built clipper ships crossed blue water to distant continents and markets. Sailors returned with tales of the Far East – not to mention with a parrot or monkey on their shoulder and tattoos as well . Having seen pagodas, Chinese coolies, plague, Indian lepers and exotic dance, the old faith seemed too small for the new understanding. Confidence grew and New England people beqan to think of themselves as a race apart.
What also grew, separate but parallel to capitalism, was Transcendentalism, a semi-religious philosophy that united mankind with all natural creation in a kind of universal Oversoul, influenced by German Romanticism. It stressed personal freedom and intense living, education and search for truth.
As stern Calvinism faded, a semi-Christian Unitarianism – as much a philosophy as religion – took its place and invited constant introspection and inquiry. There was Brook Farm and other attempts at communal living, a great interest in languages, philosophy, education and self-improvement among all classes, even the poorest. Newsletters, political commentaries and literary journals sprung up like weeds. Trained school teachers and lecturers became major New England exports!
It was from this cultural broth that the Abolitionist movement was born in farms and small villages in the form of the Republican Party..... with ominous developments for the national politics to follow.
Trust me, there's probably more cultural history here than most readers want to cover, and the new “woke” sensibility has made much of this book outdated for many modern tastes. But I'm glad to have read it.
--------------------------.
---- They came to believe in perfectibility.
---- William Ellery Channing – the conscience of New England – felt that the hour had struck for American thinkers.
---- a world that persisted in moving and changing its mind.
---- The Yankee mind was quick and sharp, but it was singularly honest.
---- ..... a mystical sense of the universe as the outer garment of God.
---- One could choose between No Punishment, Eternal Punishment -- good for most of one's neighbors -- or a strictly limited punishment that stopped after the first million years.
August 16, 2025
First Half
This book was a big deal when it was published in 1936. It won the Pulitzer Prize in History. It was a gigantic bestseller. My copy is the 19th edition which was issued in December of 1936.The critics said things like, "one of the best literary histories in any language" and "a privilege to read".
It has not aged well. It is a history of the literary world in New England after the revolutionary era and before the Civil War. Brooks did a huge amount of research. He also had a feel for the world that the writers lived in. He loves setting the stage for each new development.
But his writing style is fuzzy and over the top flowery.
Emerson "never took the world for the deed, in the work of other poets, but he often took the deed for the word."
Oriental Holy Books effect on Thoreau. "They fell on him like the light from the moon when the stars are out, in the furthest reaches of the sky-free from particulars, simple, universal, uttered with a morning prescience in the dawn of time."
Daniel Webster was "A demon of a man, a full-blooded exuberant Philistine with a demiurgic brain and a bull's body, a Philistine in all but devotion to the welfare of the state.... (The sentence goes on for another eight lines)
Almost every page has overheated convoluted sentences like this. To be fair, that was a common style at the time, although it was dying out by 1936. Brooks went on to write four more books in his "Makers and Finders" series. This was the first. The later books are less florid and more readable to us lazy modern readers.
There is a bunch of good stuff here if you look for it. He loved a good generalization. "The Connecticut mind was keen, strong and witty, but usually narrow, educated rather than cultivated."
He has some good lines. The poet Elizabeth Peabody walked into a tree and broke her nose. She explained, "I saw it, but I didn't realize it." That was considered very transcendental.
Brooks give full profiles of all the big names, Emerson, Longfellow, Thoreau and Hawthorne. He also enjoys appreciating lesser-known writers.
In one short section he discusses the poetry of Mrs. Sigourney, Sarah Edgerton, Hannah Gould, John Pierpoint, James Percival and John Neal. They were all popular published Boston poets. They are forgotten now, except that Sarah Hale was the author of "Mary had a little lamb." Brooks also enjoyed having fun in footnotes. He mentions that Percival "built a house with no door or window at the front". Which, of course, raises the question of why that would be considered the front?
I needed a break after the first 260 pages. I think I will probably come back to finish it at some point, God willing.
August 2, 2022
I was curious to read this book, an early recipient of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer, because it was dedicated to legendary Scribners editor Max Perkins, Brooks’ childhood friend.
Brooks addresses why Boston and its environs dominated the first phase of a recognizably American literary culture, both in quantity and quality—a position it maintained for most of the nineteenth century. He framed his answer in terms borrowed from Oswald Spengler, a fashionable historian at the time: it was a culture cycle, with all the phases that belonged to it, albeit compressed in a shorter time frame than those described by Spengler.
When Brooks wrote the book, every schoolchild could recite “The Ride of Paul Revere.” I came along later, but even in my childhood, Longfellow and poetry were synonymous. I doubt this is still the case, so I wonder who the prospective reader of this book might be today. Brooks offers neither a straightforward history nor incisive literary analysis; it is a social history of literary production. His style is heavily allusive, but a reader who isn’t up on these writers will miss that.
His judgments, when he offers them, are often spoken as dicta. For instance, writing of Longfellow’s “The Spanish Student,” Brooks remarks: “The first of several poems in dramatic form without a dramatic moment” (306). Yet, Brooks speaks positively of Longfellow’s imagination and cadences in other places. In fact, Brooks takes pains to single out praiseworthy aspects of writers he criticizes, such as James Russell Lowell. And he vindicates Harriet Beecher Stowe as a great writer when her reputation had already sunk.
Brooks composes word pictures to convey a feeling for the figures who populate his book. He often crams much detail into his sentences. The result, read eighty years on, seems old-fashioned. However, there are rewards for readers who bring the necessary patience, for his narrative style is often entertaining. He refers to works by a multitude of authors. I readily believe he has read all of that and more—not just the remarkables (Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Margaret Fuller) and those whose reputation, once aglow, was already dimming by the 1930s (Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Whittier) but even those little heard of today, such as William Austin and Sylvester Judd.
I borrowed the copy I read from the library, and it showed every sign of having been frequently used. But nevertheless, the paper knife had not yet been applied in two places.
Brooks addresses why Boston and its environs dominated the first phase of a recognizably American literary culture, both in quantity and quality—a position it maintained for most of the nineteenth century. He framed his answer in terms borrowed from Oswald Spengler, a fashionable historian at the time: it was a culture cycle, with all the phases that belonged to it, albeit compressed in a shorter time frame than those described by Spengler.
When Brooks wrote the book, every schoolchild could recite “The Ride of Paul Revere.” I came along later, but even in my childhood, Longfellow and poetry were synonymous. I doubt this is still the case, so I wonder who the prospective reader of this book might be today. Brooks offers neither a straightforward history nor incisive literary analysis; it is a social history of literary production. His style is heavily allusive, but a reader who isn’t up on these writers will miss that.
His judgments, when he offers them, are often spoken as dicta. For instance, writing of Longfellow’s “The Spanish Student,” Brooks remarks: “The first of several poems in dramatic form without a dramatic moment” (306). Yet, Brooks speaks positively of Longfellow’s imagination and cadences in other places. In fact, Brooks takes pains to single out praiseworthy aspects of writers he criticizes, such as James Russell Lowell. And he vindicates Harriet Beecher Stowe as a great writer when her reputation had already sunk.
Brooks composes word pictures to convey a feeling for the figures who populate his book. He often crams much detail into his sentences. The result, read eighty years on, seems old-fashioned. However, there are rewards for readers who bring the necessary patience, for his narrative style is often entertaining. He refers to works by a multitude of authors. I readily believe he has read all of that and more—not just the remarkables (Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Margaret Fuller) and those whose reputation, once aglow, was already dimming by the 1930s (Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Whittier) but even those little heard of today, such as William Austin and Sylvester Judd.
I borrowed the copy I read from the library, and it showed every sign of having been frequently used. But nevertheless, the paper knife had not yet been applied in two places.
July 15, 2020
"Boston was congenitally obtuse in all that concerned the sense, except Madeira." (3)
"'the death-bed of genius'" (quoting William Austin of Harvard ca. 1800, 37)
"The literary mind was astir in Boston. Not like thunder, not with a roll of drums, but with a little chirrup here and there, the dawn had slowly broken." (111)
"When he [Hawthorne] had stood at the window, on Sunday mornings, studying the church across the way, watching the sunlight stealing down the steeple, he had always stood behind the curtain. To see the world with a side-long glance, by a certain indirection, was second nature to him; and this was the mood his romances conveyed, as if, in spite of all their air of daylight, he had never looked straight at Boston or Salem, as if he had always seen them over his shoulder." (387)
"One of Field's jokes was about the Boston man who read Shakespeare late in life but found him far beyond his expectation. 'There are not twenty men in Boston who could have written those plays,' he said." (482-3)
"Ironically enough, it was Boston and Cambridge that grew to be provincial, while the local and even parochial Concord mind, which had always been universal, proved to be also national." (530)
"'the death-bed of genius'" (quoting William Austin of Harvard ca. 1800, 37)
"The literary mind was astir in Boston. Not like thunder, not with a roll of drums, but with a little chirrup here and there, the dawn had slowly broken." (111)
"When he [Hawthorne] had stood at the window, on Sunday mornings, studying the church across the way, watching the sunlight stealing down the steeple, he had always stood behind the curtain. To see the world with a side-long glance, by a certain indirection, was second nature to him; and this was the mood his romances conveyed, as if, in spite of all their air of daylight, he had never looked straight at Boston or Salem, as if he had always seen them over his shoulder." (387)
"One of Field's jokes was about the Boston man who read Shakespeare late in life but found him far beyond his expectation. 'There are not twenty men in Boston who could have written those plays,' he said." (482-3)
"Ironically enough, it was Boston and Cambridge that grew to be provincial, while the local and even parochial Concord mind, which had always been universal, proved to be also national." (530)
April 9, 2020
Hidden in this book is nothing less than Brooks's tale of American culture's rise, decline and fall, as experienced by its cultural gatekeepers - the poets, writers and sages of Antebellum New England. It's his justification of the artist and the intellectual in America. I don't agree with every aspect of Brooks's interpretation (he suggests that all that these literati achieved was in spite of their Puritan past, and also strangely makes James Russell Lowell the harbinger of cultural doom simply for his "conscious" criticism). I find as much to blame as to praise in the Transcendentalist outlook, great writers though they were. But every suggestion Brooks makes, every theory, every assertion, carries with it the sign of long meditation, and as a result inspires the same in readers. Brooke's prose is evocative, often wildly so, pregnant with images, scents and sense, as it unfolds the tapestry of his tale.
March 1, 2021
Bit ripe for me. Also, didn't realize it was literary overview. That's on me. Sometimes it gets excessively catty (ie, who's reading who), but the description of Margaret Fuller escaping the New York City of blood stained dog catchers for the Garden State was nice. Every 15 or so pages, there is a description that really makes it. But for the most part I was kind of bored. Wish it mined the contents of the writing and the thinking a little bit more. Like I've never read a more boring description of Brooks Farms in my life.
May 2, 2022
This is an excellent and well written account of the intellectual and cultural history of New England, with focus on the men and women of the Boston, Cambridge, and Concord area, the ones who had notable influence on the rest of the country. These included Emerson, Thoreau, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Fuller, and many others.
November 21, 2017
VWB was a marvelous literary historian who can still be read with immense profit. Highly recommended.
July 17, 2015
This is a lovely book for a Newenglandphile like me. The literary and cultural florescence of a region. I recall finishing it many months ago, and am only now remembering to write a brief review. I recall a series of chapters of mixed quality, but a consistent tone and writing voice that made me feel half a century younger. And at my age, this is a good thing indeed.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews