Biography of our author, George William Curtis. Curtis was born in Providence on February 24, 1824, and his mother died when he was two. At six he was sent with his elder brother to school in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, where he remained for five years. Then, his father having again married happily, the boys were brought home to Providence, where they stayed till, in around 1839, their father moved to New York. Three years later, Curtis, fell in sympathy with the spirit of the so-called Transcendental movement. He joined the communal experiment known as Brook Farm from 1842 to 1843. He was accompanied by his brother, James Burrill Curtis, whose influence on him was strong and helpful. He remained there for two years, and met many interesting men and women. Then came two years, passed partly in New York, partly in Concord in order mainly to be in the friendly neighborhood of Emerson, and then followed four years spent in Europe, Egypt and Syria.
I first read this book several years ago. I remembered that it was a sometimes funny collection of a man's daydreams shared with his more-grounded wife, but I had forgotten how lovely and sweetly sad it is, and how lyrical the prose.