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Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself
Originally published in 1836.
Sheppard Lee, Written By Himself is a work of dark satire from the early years of the American Republic. Published as an autobiography and praised by Edgar Allan Poe, this is the story of a young idler who goes in search of buried treasure and finds instead the power to transfer his soul into other men's bodies. What follows is one increasingly practiced body snatcher's picaresque journey through early American pursuits of happiness, as each new form Sheppard Lee assumes disappoints him anew while making him want more and more. When Lee's metempsychosis draws him into the marriage market, the money market, and the slave market, Bird's fable of American upward mobility takes a more sinister turn. Lee learns that everything in America, even virtue and vice, are interchangeable; everything is an object and has its price.
Looking forward to Melville's The Confidence-Man and beyond that to William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch , this strange and compelling story is a penetrating critique of American life and values as well as a crucial addition to the canon of American literature.
Sheppard Lee, Written By Himself is a work of dark satire from the early years of the American Republic. Published as an autobiography and praised by Edgar Allan Poe, this is the story of a young idler who goes in search of buried treasure and finds instead the power to transfer his soul into other men's bodies. What follows is one increasingly practiced body snatcher's picaresque journey through early American pursuits of happiness, as each new form Sheppard Lee assumes disappoints him anew while making him want more and more. When Lee's metempsychosis draws him into the marriage market, the money market, and the slave market, Bird's fable of American upward mobility takes a more sinister turn. Lee learns that everything in America, even virtue and vice, are interchangeable; everything is an object and has its price.
Looking forward to Melville's The Confidence-Man and beyond that to William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch , this strange and compelling story is a penetrating critique of American life and values as well as a crucial addition to the canon of American literature.
425 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1836
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About the author
Robert Montgomery Bird
174 books5 followersRobert Montgomery Bird was an American novelist, playwright, and physician.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
January 29, 2019
Sheppard Lee, the eponymous, profligate narrator of this rather obscure antebellum novel, lets his considerable inherited estate waste away through sheer indolence. Hounded by creditors, he aims to unearth a pirate’s treasure said to be hidden in a New Jersey swamp.
A local legend says to dream three consecutive nights of the same spot of burial; go to that spot and say the Lord’s Prayer backwards; and then exactly at midnight start to dig – and treasure ye shall find.
Sheppard Lee dreams the dreams, says the prayer last word to first, and in the hardest work he has ever done in his sorrowful life he digs deep enough to hit something solid. It is precisely then that he is waylaid by grave robbers and beaten, it appears, to death.
But while Sheppard Lee will not lay his hands on Captain Kidd’s treasure, the recipe he has followed imbues him with a different magic. As his life seeps away, he wishes himself to be in the body of another corpse. And - Snap - he is! And very alive!
Moreover, whenever his new body gets in trouble he only has to wish again to become another. In this way Sheppard Lee becomes six different characters: John Hazelwood Higginson, a successful Philadelphia brewer but with a gouty toe and a nagging wife; Isaac Dulmer Dawkins, a penniless dandy contriving to marry for money; Abram Skinner, a miserly money lender and note shaver with ungrateful progeny; Zachariah Longstraw, a naïve Quaker philanthropist falsely accused by Southern brigands of being an abolitionist worthy of lynching; Tom, a contented slave who unwittingly sparks a doomed insurrection;* and Arthur Megrim, a wealthy heir with an unfortunate digestive apparatus.
In each incarnation, the spirit of Sheppard Lee remembers the previous tenements but is wholly the new persona.
The range of dialects is impressive as is the ever-shifting worldview. It allows the following observations:
-- The memory of a dandy passeth away, unless recorded on the works of his tailor.
-- What I wish to be understood is, that man is an unthankful animal, and of such rare inconsistency of temper, that he seldom forgoes an opportunity to punish the virtue which he so loudly applauds.
-- I never, indeed, knew a lawyer to believe anything unless he was paid for it.
-- The poor man in America feels himself, in a political view, as he really is, he equal of the millionaire; but this very consciousness of equality adds double bitterness to the sense of actual inferiority, which the richer and more fortunate usually do their best, as far as manners and deportment are concerned, to keep alive.
-- Labour, pain, and care – the evils which men are so apt to censure Providence enough to know, are essential to the true enjoyment of life, serving, like salt, pepper, mustard, and other condiments and spices, which are, by themselves, ungrateful to the palate, to give relish to the dish that is insipid and cloying without them.
In an unusually helpful nyrb Introduction, we learn that Robert Montgomery Bird, the author Himself, was a bit of a transmigrating soul, being peripatetic in career. He was a physician before he was a novelist, and then in turn became a photographer, a journalist and teacher. With each new career he utterly abandoned the previous one.
Found among Bird’s papers were sketches of other ‘occupations’ he considered for this novel: a genteel forger; a fanatic – Mormonite, perhaps; a police officer; a soldier in black Hawk War, where gen’ls get all the credit.
All fascinating possibilities. And we are not limited by Bird’s little notes. Imagine if you will: a young jazz buff in Tokyo, a crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong, a disc jockey in Manhattan, a physicist in Ireland, an elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China, a cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa, a musician in London. All possible, even if we have to wait precisely 163 years.**
____________________
*As with Huckleberry Finn some modern readers will not see past the language used in this section and others in the book. That would be unfortunate, although I don’t write now to change any minds. However, the author is more Twain than Stowe, and the satirical style makes this none the less real.
**A free one-year Goodreads subscription if you can identify the reference.
A local legend says to dream three consecutive nights of the same spot of burial; go to that spot and say the Lord’s Prayer backwards; and then exactly at midnight start to dig – and treasure ye shall find.
Sheppard Lee dreams the dreams, says the prayer last word to first, and in the hardest work he has ever done in his sorrowful life he digs deep enough to hit something solid. It is precisely then that he is waylaid by grave robbers and beaten, it appears, to death.
But while Sheppard Lee will not lay his hands on Captain Kidd’s treasure, the recipe he has followed imbues him with a different magic. As his life seeps away, he wishes himself to be in the body of another corpse. And - Snap - he is! And very alive!
Moreover, whenever his new body gets in trouble he only has to wish again to become another. In this way Sheppard Lee becomes six different characters: John Hazelwood Higginson, a successful Philadelphia brewer but with a gouty toe and a nagging wife; Isaac Dulmer Dawkins, a penniless dandy contriving to marry for money; Abram Skinner, a miserly money lender and note shaver with ungrateful progeny; Zachariah Longstraw, a naïve Quaker philanthropist falsely accused by Southern brigands of being an abolitionist worthy of lynching; Tom, a contented slave who unwittingly sparks a doomed insurrection;* and Arthur Megrim, a wealthy heir with an unfortunate digestive apparatus.
In each incarnation, the spirit of Sheppard Lee remembers the previous tenements but is wholly the new persona.
The range of dialects is impressive as is the ever-shifting worldview. It allows the following observations:
-- The memory of a dandy passeth away, unless recorded on the works of his tailor.
-- What I wish to be understood is, that man is an unthankful animal, and of such rare inconsistency of temper, that he seldom forgoes an opportunity to punish the virtue which he so loudly applauds.
-- I never, indeed, knew a lawyer to believe anything unless he was paid for it.
-- The poor man in America feels himself, in a political view, as he really is, he equal of the millionaire; but this very consciousness of equality adds double bitterness to the sense of actual inferiority, which the richer and more fortunate usually do their best, as far as manners and deportment are concerned, to keep alive.
-- Labour, pain, and care – the evils which men are so apt to censure Providence enough to know, are essential to the true enjoyment of life, serving, like salt, pepper, mustard, and other condiments and spices, which are, by themselves, ungrateful to the palate, to give relish to the dish that is insipid and cloying without them.
In an unusually helpful nyrb Introduction, we learn that Robert Montgomery Bird, the author Himself, was a bit of a transmigrating soul, being peripatetic in career. He was a physician before he was a novelist, and then in turn became a photographer, a journalist and teacher. With each new career he utterly abandoned the previous one.
Found among Bird’s papers were sketches of other ‘occupations’ he considered for this novel: a genteel forger; a fanatic – Mormonite, perhaps; a police officer; a soldier in black Hawk War, where gen’ls get all the credit.
All fascinating possibilities. And we are not limited by Bird’s little notes. Imagine if you will: a young jazz buff in Tokyo, a crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong, a disc jockey in Manhattan, a physicist in Ireland, an elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China, a cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa, a musician in London. All possible, even if we have to wait precisely 163 years.**
____________________
*As with Huckleberry Finn some modern readers will not see past the language used in this section and others in the book. That would be unfortunate, although I don’t write now to change any minds. However, the author is more Twain than Stowe, and the satirical style makes this none the less real.
**A free one-year Goodreads subscription if you can identify the reference.
March 21, 2025
In my recent foray through American Gothic literature, I stumbled upon Bird's Sheppard Lee (1836), a woefully overlooked masterpiece that shimmers with prescient modernism while conjuring the many-faced spirit of Jacksonian America—a truly out-of-body experience that left me spirited away from the first page. Bird—physician, playwright, and contemporary of Cooper and Irving—constructs a phantasmagorical odyssey through antebellum society's strata via his protagonist's body-hopping adventures, proving that when it comes to social mobility, our hero really knows how to get under someone else's skin.
The hapless Sheppard Lee, a failed farmer who accidentally kills himself while treasure-hunting, discovers his consciousness can migrate into recently deceased bodies, thus beginning his picaresque journey through different social identities. "I found myself transformed," Lee recounts with characteristic bewilderment, "from a substantial farmer of New Jersey, into a substantial money-lender of the city of Philadelphia; and what was more, I was perfectly satisfied with the change." This satisfaction proves fleeting, as each bodily transmigration offers momentary euphoria followed by inevitable disillusionment—a pattern that forms the philosophical backbone of Bird's exploration of the American pursuit of happiness.
Lee's transmigrations—from his original body to wealthy miser John H. Skinner, dandy Zachariah Longstraw, philanthropist Abram Skinner, enslaved man Tom, and aristocrat Scipio Brummell—provide Bird with a panoramic vehicle for dissecting America's class anxieties and social hypocrisies. When inhabiting Tom's body, Lee experiences the brutal reality of slavery, observing with devastating clarity: "The meanest white man considers himself a lord and gentleman compared with the best of us; and truly there is no comparison between his privileges and ours." Through Longstraw, Bird skewers the vacuity of Philadelphia's fashion-obsessed elite (proving these dandies are all style and no substance—or in Lee's case, all substance in borrowed style), while his time as philanthropist I.D. Dulmer exposes the self-serving nature of performative charity.
The parallels with Woolf's Orlando are striking, though Bird's work predates it by nearly a century—both use body transformation as a vehicle for social critique, though Bird's transformations cross racial and class boundaries rather than temporal ones, anchoring his protagonist in the tumultuous present of pre-Civil War America. In the body of Scipio Brummell, Lee confronts the hollow performance of aristocratic values, engaging in a duel that spectacularly showcases the absurdity of honor culture. Bird's episodic structure allows him to create suspenseful miniature arcs within each bodily inhabitation—from Skinner's paranoid protection of his wealth to Longstraw's social humiliation at a ball when his fashion faux pas is revealed.
Bird's stylistic approach diverges dramatically from the ornate romanticism of his contemporaries—instead employing a direct, satirical voice that anticipates Twain's caustic wit while maintaining a philosophical undercurrent reminiscent of Hawthorne's allegorical depth.
The work stands as a vibrant commentary on American identity formation, suggesting that our desperate quest for self-improvement leads only to perpetual discontent—a message that certainly hit me where I live, though Lee would simply prefer to hit where others live instead. "I was haunted by the same restlessness and dissatisfaction that had pursued me through life," Lee laments, capturing the essential American dilemma that resonates as powerfully today as in Bird's time.
Sheppard Lee operates as both satire and cautionary tale, skewering the societal obsession with improvement while acknowledging the genuine suffering that class stratification creates. Bird's extraordinary novel—championed by Edgar Allan Poe in his own time but subsequently overshadowed—offers a remarkably fresh perspective on antebellum America's cultural preoccupations. Its brilliant conceit of body-swapping, deployed decades before such techniques became commonplace in fiction, establishes Bird as an overlooked innovator whose work deserves resurrection from the literary crypts where too many American treasures lie waiting for rediscovery, their spectral voices still speaking with uncanny relevance to our contemporary condition.
This novel was pure embodied joy—I couldn't put it down, as though Lee's transmigrative powers had possessed me too, leaving me soul-deep in its pages until the final corporeal transfer. Bird's novel proves that great American literature isn't just about finding yourself—sometimes it's about finding yourself in someone else entirely, a sly hint that we're all just dying to try on different lives.
The hapless Sheppard Lee, a failed farmer who accidentally kills himself while treasure-hunting, discovers his consciousness can migrate into recently deceased bodies, thus beginning his picaresque journey through different social identities. "I found myself transformed," Lee recounts with characteristic bewilderment, "from a substantial farmer of New Jersey, into a substantial money-lender of the city of Philadelphia; and what was more, I was perfectly satisfied with the change." This satisfaction proves fleeting, as each bodily transmigration offers momentary euphoria followed by inevitable disillusionment—a pattern that forms the philosophical backbone of Bird's exploration of the American pursuit of happiness.
Lee's transmigrations—from his original body to wealthy miser John H. Skinner, dandy Zachariah Longstraw, philanthropist Abram Skinner, enslaved man Tom, and aristocrat Scipio Brummell—provide Bird with a panoramic vehicle for dissecting America's class anxieties and social hypocrisies. When inhabiting Tom's body, Lee experiences the brutal reality of slavery, observing with devastating clarity: "The meanest white man considers himself a lord and gentleman compared with the best of us; and truly there is no comparison between his privileges and ours." Through Longstraw, Bird skewers the vacuity of Philadelphia's fashion-obsessed elite (proving these dandies are all style and no substance—or in Lee's case, all substance in borrowed style), while his time as philanthropist I.D. Dulmer exposes the self-serving nature of performative charity.
The parallels with Woolf's Orlando are striking, though Bird's work predates it by nearly a century—both use body transformation as a vehicle for social critique, though Bird's transformations cross racial and class boundaries rather than temporal ones, anchoring his protagonist in the tumultuous present of pre-Civil War America. In the body of Scipio Brummell, Lee confronts the hollow performance of aristocratic values, engaging in a duel that spectacularly showcases the absurdity of honor culture. Bird's episodic structure allows him to create suspenseful miniature arcs within each bodily inhabitation—from Skinner's paranoid protection of his wealth to Longstraw's social humiliation at a ball when his fashion faux pas is revealed.
Bird's stylistic approach diverges dramatically from the ornate romanticism of his contemporaries—instead employing a direct, satirical voice that anticipates Twain's caustic wit while maintaining a philosophical undercurrent reminiscent of Hawthorne's allegorical depth.
The work stands as a vibrant commentary on American identity formation, suggesting that our desperate quest for self-improvement leads only to perpetual discontent—a message that certainly hit me where I live, though Lee would simply prefer to hit where others live instead. "I was haunted by the same restlessness and dissatisfaction that had pursued me through life," Lee laments, capturing the essential American dilemma that resonates as powerfully today as in Bird's time.
Sheppard Lee operates as both satire and cautionary tale, skewering the societal obsession with improvement while acknowledging the genuine suffering that class stratification creates. Bird's extraordinary novel—championed by Edgar Allan Poe in his own time but subsequently overshadowed—offers a remarkably fresh perspective on antebellum America's cultural preoccupations. Its brilliant conceit of body-swapping, deployed decades before such techniques became commonplace in fiction, establishes Bird as an overlooked innovator whose work deserves resurrection from the literary crypts where too many American treasures lie waiting for rediscovery, their spectral voices still speaking with uncanny relevance to our contemporary condition.
This novel was pure embodied joy—I couldn't put it down, as though Lee's transmigrative powers had possessed me too, leaving me soul-deep in its pages until the final corporeal transfer. Bird's novel proves that great American literature isn't just about finding yourself—sometimes it's about finding yourself in someone else entirely, a sly hint that we're all just dying to try on different lives.
Want to read
August 26, 2019Philadelphia Gothic. Uses the framing device of metempsychosis, the main character can at the moment of death transmigrate into a different body if he chooses , to satirize philadelphia of the time through characters like a broke dandy rogue and a comfortable slave who reads an abolitionist pamphlet and freaks out, etc.. edgar allen poe wrote a review. it was very positive but correctly pointed out how much better it could have been had the main character maintained his own original personality even as he changed bodies.
bird's other novels include Nick Of the Woods. called the first serial killer thriller, or romance. a pascifist quaker preaches love during the day but at night murders native americans for what they did to his family. mark twayne said it was the horror highlight of his young reading.
obviously heavily indebted to charles brockden brown though he publicly denounced CBBs works.
i just read the first volume of Bird's Peter Pilgrim sketches which i liked and are based in cool early americanic folklore.like the hypnotic power of snakes, ancient races of tall cyclopian giants, and their big skeletons, pre columbo non european visitors to america, insanity, and more..
what else....
oh- Bird would have written poetry for local literary magazines. only, its just a hunch. and there isnt any way to know for sure. i just mention it because it was a pretty strong hunch.
bird's other novels include Nick Of the Woods. called the first serial killer thriller, or romance. a pascifist quaker preaches love during the day but at night murders native americans for what they did to his family. mark twayne said it was the horror highlight of his young reading.
obviously heavily indebted to charles brockden brown though he publicly denounced CBBs works.
i just read the first volume of Bird's Peter Pilgrim sketches which i liked and are based in cool early americanic folklore.like the hypnotic power of snakes, ancient races of tall cyclopian giants, and their big skeletons, pre columbo non european visitors to america, insanity, and more..
what else....
oh- Bird would have written poetry for local literary magazines. only, its just a hunch. and there isnt any way to know for sure. i just mention it because it was a pretty strong hunch.
March 23, 2012
Robert Montgomery Bird is a forgotten contemporary of Melville, Poe, and Hawthorne. This book is a treasure that allows us to view several different aspects of 19th Century life through the eyes of Sheppard Lee as he pops in and out of bodies. Sheppard Lee should be considered a classic American novel along with Moby Dick and A Scarlet Letter.
May 1, 2017
Interesting. Frequently amusing satire and a picture of several milieus of ante-bellum America. But for me it never really takes off. However, I agree that it is unique for the period and may be worth reading as an aspect of the development of the American novel.
March 6, 2017
19th century Americans, they were just like us
January 2, 2018
Voici un roman bien singulier. Publié en 1836 aux USA, il vient d'être réédité là-bas, et traduit pour la première fois en France. Il s'agit d'un mélange de conte philosophique et de satyre de la société américaine de l'époque.
On nous y relate l'histoire de Sheppard Lee, jeune homme aisé du New Jersey, qui suite au décès de son père, hérite d'un riche domaine maraîcher. Bien décidé à se la couler douce et à dilapider la fortune familiale, Sheppard Lee ne tarde pas à se retrouver désargenté, insatisfait et harcelé par ses créanciers.
Alors que sa vie semble lui échapper, Sheppard va alors découvrir (dans des circonstances que je ne détaillerais pas pour cause de spoil) qu'il est capable de transférer son esprit dans des corps morts et d'ainsi les faire revenir à la vie. Commence alors pour Sheppard Lee de nouvelles vies puisqu'il va à partir de ce jour se chercher un hôte capable de lui apporter le bonheur.
Ces divers transferts vont être autant d'occasion pour l'auteur de dresser des portraits ironiques de la société américaine de l'époque. Bons bourgeois, jeunes dandys cherchant le mariage d'argent, usuriers, esclaves, ce bon vieux Sheppard va ainsi expérimenter diverses enveloppes et surtout diverses personnalités, cherchant à chaque fois une condition qui le satisfasse.
Je ne vais bien sûr pas rentrer dans les détails, mais le récit ne manque pas de saveurs. Le texte est sacrément irrévérencieux envers la société américaine, et chacun en prend pour son grade. Plusieurs passages sont mêmes extrêmement critiques ou provocateur pour l'époque. Je pense notamment à un passage où Sheppard Lee propose de recycler les cadavres humains pour en faire de l'engrais afin de ne pas laisser perdre tous ces corps. On imagine fort bien l'effet d'une telle proposition en 1836...
De même, certains passages font étrangement écho avec certaines problématiques contemporaines. Lorsque l'auteur (par la bouche de Sheppard) parle de politique et notamment du processus démocratique par exemple, ou lorsqu'il évoque l'intérêt pour lui de taxer les profits de la bourse et des banques pour les réinvestir dans les hôpitaux et les écoles publiques.
Il est troublant (et aussi un poil déprimant) de croiser ces problématiques dés 1836, et de se dire qu'elles restent à l'heure actuelle encore en débat. Cela rend en tout cas le texte étonnamment moderne, malgré son grand âge et sa narration un peu datée.
Ce roman souffre bien sûr de quelques défauts, son époque de rédaction n'étant pas des moindres. La langue est bien sûr datée, et souffre de quelques longueurs et digressions dispensables. Cependant, le texte est aussi intéressant pour le portrait de la société américaine qu'il dresse. Les travers des uns et des autres y sont habilement mis en scène, non sans humour, et sans toutefois écarter les conflits en germe de cette même société.
La question de l'esclavage revient plusieurs fois das le cours du roman, et la fracture entre Sud esclavagiste et Nord abolitionniste est également très présente, montrant quelques décennies avant le début de la guerre de Sécession (24 ans avant pour être exact), les vives tensions déchirant déjà la population.
Un roman narquois donc, mais pas que, et qui vaut le coup d'œil tant pour son sujet que pour son traitement, ainsi que pour le portrait qu'il donne d'une Amérique balbutiante en ce début de XIXe siècle.
On nous y relate l'histoire de Sheppard Lee, jeune homme aisé du New Jersey, qui suite au décès de son père, hérite d'un riche domaine maraîcher. Bien décidé à se la couler douce et à dilapider la fortune familiale, Sheppard Lee ne tarde pas à se retrouver désargenté, insatisfait et harcelé par ses créanciers.
Alors que sa vie semble lui échapper, Sheppard va alors découvrir (dans des circonstances que je ne détaillerais pas pour cause de spoil) qu'il est capable de transférer son esprit dans des corps morts et d'ainsi les faire revenir à la vie. Commence alors pour Sheppard Lee de nouvelles vies puisqu'il va à partir de ce jour se chercher un hôte capable de lui apporter le bonheur.
Ces divers transferts vont être autant d'occasion pour l'auteur de dresser des portraits ironiques de la société américaine de l'époque. Bons bourgeois, jeunes dandys cherchant le mariage d'argent, usuriers, esclaves, ce bon vieux Sheppard va ainsi expérimenter diverses enveloppes et surtout diverses personnalités, cherchant à chaque fois une condition qui le satisfasse.
Je ne vais bien sûr pas rentrer dans les détails, mais le récit ne manque pas de saveurs. Le texte est sacrément irrévérencieux envers la société américaine, et chacun en prend pour son grade. Plusieurs passages sont mêmes extrêmement critiques ou provocateur pour l'époque. Je pense notamment à un passage où Sheppard Lee propose de recycler les cadavres humains pour en faire de l'engrais afin de ne pas laisser perdre tous ces corps. On imagine fort bien l'effet d'une telle proposition en 1836...
De même, certains passages font étrangement écho avec certaines problématiques contemporaines. Lorsque l'auteur (par la bouche de Sheppard) parle de politique et notamment du processus démocratique par exemple, ou lorsqu'il évoque l'intérêt pour lui de taxer les profits de la bourse et des banques pour les réinvestir dans les hôpitaux et les écoles publiques.
Il est troublant (et aussi un poil déprimant) de croiser ces problématiques dés 1836, et de se dire qu'elles restent à l'heure actuelle encore en débat. Cela rend en tout cas le texte étonnamment moderne, malgré son grand âge et sa narration un peu datée.
Ce roman souffre bien sûr de quelques défauts, son époque de rédaction n'étant pas des moindres. La langue est bien sûr datée, et souffre de quelques longueurs et digressions dispensables. Cependant, le texte est aussi intéressant pour le portrait de la société américaine qu'il dresse. Les travers des uns et des autres y sont habilement mis en scène, non sans humour, et sans toutefois écarter les conflits en germe de cette même société.
La question de l'esclavage revient plusieurs fois das le cours du roman, et la fracture entre Sud esclavagiste et Nord abolitionniste est également très présente, montrant quelques décennies avant le début de la guerre de Sécession (24 ans avant pour être exact), les vives tensions déchirant déjà la population.
Un roman narquois donc, mais pas que, et qui vaut le coup d'œil tant pour son sujet que pour son traitement, ainsi que pour le portrait qu'il donne d'une Amérique balbutiante en ce début de XIXe siècle.
December 30, 2024
I kind of hated this book the whole time I was reading it, but I'm still probably going to write my term paper on it because it makes a few good points of social commentary as a satire.
Read
August 1, 2019 A lazy New Jersey rustic switches bodies down the Eastern seaboard in this enormously peculiar novel which functions as meta-critique about the nature of personhood and satire on Jacksonian America. It's interesting as a historical object but I can't really say I enjoyed it.
Read
July 30, 2015published 1836.
For a longer view of what I thought about this book, you can click here. It's definitely one of the more bizarre novels I've read as I'm going through Early American fiction this year. Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself is a mixture of satire and comedy, but each has a purpose in this novel.
Just briefly, the titular character Sheppard Lee is a sort of grown-up ne'er do well who is left a prosperous estate upon the death of his father. Because he is so lazy and doesn't tend to things he needs to do, the long and short of it is that he loses pretty much everything his father had worked so hard for. Because he wants a quick out, eventually he gets the idea to go and dig up some legendary pirate treasure said to be buried close to his farm. An unfortunate accident while doing so leaves Lee in a sort of a trance; when he awakens, he looks down at
"...that eidolon, or representative, or duplicate of me, that was stretched on the grass"
and realizes that he's actually looking at his own corpse. Running off in an unsuccessful effort to find help, he returns to the scene and his body has vanished, with only a "torn and bloody" shoe remaining. As luck would have it, a certain Squire Higginson with whom Lee has had words, has also met his end, setting Lee to thinking:
"Why might I not, that is to say, my spirit, -- deprived by an unhappy accident of its natural dwelling, -- claim, and thus uniting interests together, as two feeble factions unite together in the political world, become a body possessing life, strength and usefulness?"
In short, Lee decides that it would be a good thing to "inhabit" Higginson's body -- and wishes it so. Soon he finds himself in the now-reanimated body of the Squire -- congratulating himself because now he is a "respectable man, with my pockets full of money." But through a series of adventures, Higginson's body is just the first stop on Lee's soul/self/spirit journey (and I learned a new word to define this concept -- metempsychosis) -- and along the way he moves into various bodies whose owners all have one big thing in common: their lives are centered around money, each desiring to improve his own situation either through speculating, credit, expectations of good inheritances, or marrying into a better station. Lee lives quite a few different lives and in each one, makes a number of discoveries as he seeks out happiness. The novel is a satire and serves to skewer familiar types of the period: the dandy who plays a great game yet has not even a penny, a moneylender whose miserly qualities are very well known, an abolitionist philanthropist who spends his life trying to help the less fortunate and who does so ultimately at his own expense. What lesson does he ultimately learn? I leave that for the reader to discover.
Robert Montgomery Bird was an anti-abolitionist, so when he comes to talk about slaves in the South, things get pretty intense. He had me laughing up until that point, but then his paternalistic attitude toward slavery sobered me up. Considering his stance on abolition, I get where he's coming from, but it is definitely not pretty. The rest of the book, however, is actually quite funny and Sheppard Lee is a character I'll definitely remember.
For a longer view of what I thought about this book, you can click here. It's definitely one of the more bizarre novels I've read as I'm going through Early American fiction this year. Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself is a mixture of satire and comedy, but each has a purpose in this novel.
Just briefly, the titular character Sheppard Lee is a sort of grown-up ne'er do well who is left a prosperous estate upon the death of his father. Because he is so lazy and doesn't tend to things he needs to do, the long and short of it is that he loses pretty much everything his father had worked so hard for. Because he wants a quick out, eventually he gets the idea to go and dig up some legendary pirate treasure said to be buried close to his farm. An unfortunate accident while doing so leaves Lee in a sort of a trance; when he awakens, he looks down at
"...that eidolon, or representative, or duplicate of me, that was stretched on the grass"
and realizes that he's actually looking at his own corpse. Running off in an unsuccessful effort to find help, he returns to the scene and his body has vanished, with only a "torn and bloody" shoe remaining. As luck would have it, a certain Squire Higginson with whom Lee has had words, has also met his end, setting Lee to thinking:
"Why might I not, that is to say, my spirit, -- deprived by an unhappy accident of its natural dwelling, -- claim, and thus uniting interests together, as two feeble factions unite together in the political world, become a body possessing life, strength and usefulness?"
In short, Lee decides that it would be a good thing to "inhabit" Higginson's body -- and wishes it so. Soon he finds himself in the now-reanimated body of the Squire -- congratulating himself because now he is a "respectable man, with my pockets full of money." But through a series of adventures, Higginson's body is just the first stop on Lee's soul/self/spirit journey (and I learned a new word to define this concept -- metempsychosis) -- and along the way he moves into various bodies whose owners all have one big thing in common: their lives are centered around money, each desiring to improve his own situation either through speculating, credit, expectations of good inheritances, or marrying into a better station. Lee lives quite a few different lives and in each one, makes a number of discoveries as he seeks out happiness. The novel is a satire and serves to skewer familiar types of the period: the dandy who plays a great game yet has not even a penny, a moneylender whose miserly qualities are very well known, an abolitionist philanthropist who spends his life trying to help the less fortunate and who does so ultimately at his own expense. What lesson does he ultimately learn? I leave that for the reader to discover.
Robert Montgomery Bird was an anti-abolitionist, so when he comes to talk about slaves in the South, things get pretty intense. He had me laughing up until that point, but then his paternalistic attitude toward slavery sobered me up. Considering his stance on abolition, I get where he's coming from, but it is definitely not pretty. The rest of the book, however, is actually quite funny and Sheppard Lee is a character I'll definitely remember.
June 25, 2017
I thought this book was funny, thought-provoking, and certainly had some traces if science fiction to it as well. It was pretty slow for the first part of the book, but right around page 50, things really get interesting. There is some great satire, and while I wish that Bird had been more abolitionist in his portions on slavery (His discussion of "the happy slave" can get nauseating sometimes). He walks an interesting line by exploring the issue of slavery without using abolitionist Sentimental writing or racist, pro-slavery literature. He finds an interesting way in this segment of the book to present both positions and leave the reader to decide for himself. When Sheppard Lee is dwelling in the bodies of others, he acquires much of their mannerisms and opinions without fully losing his initial identity. His identity is buried at times, and constantly in flux, but he seems to maintain both consciousnesses to some extent. I particularly liked Bird's sections on the Philanthropist, the mentally unhinged Southern gentleman, the miserly father, and the slave. Also, while the text claims to avoid philosophizing, there are some chapters that are Melvillesque in their musing.
November 21, 2012
Re-reading this for a course. It will not be a chore to re-read this. Reading the introduction now, which provides some great insight into the comtemporary philosophies Bird was working within. Fascinating is Hume's idea of the fiction of "self[hood]." This notion provides an interesting way to consider self, especially interesting after just having read Poe's novel, Arthur Gordon Pym and his idea of 'self.'
Unlike some reviewers, I didn't find this book to be racist. I read it as Bird satirizing his contemporary society.
Unlike some reviewers, I didn't find this book to be racist. I read it as Bird satirizing his contemporary society.
August 16, 2009
Anderson Dean (fellow reader whom you all may take good advice from) recommended this title, which- much like Melville's "big book" shows that Modernity was invented long before the modern age- bends the mind and begs questions about what, exactly, an individual is. There is much which is disguised as period-didactic and even more which seems period-racist, but the book (while not necessarily undated or unracist) is much, much more than it's obvious flaws.
June 29, 2011
Interesting if dated. Prefigures a favourite theme of American popular fiction and (especially) film: supernaturalism as morality tale. Pretty racist by modern standards in a couple of chapters concerning black slaves, which makes it difficult to really revive this as a classic central to the canon. And the writing itself isn't particularly compelling. So it's interesting to read as a product of its time rather than being a perennial classic masterpiece with universal appeal.
March 2, 2013
I had to read this for my Literature of Philadelphia course and I thought it was outstanding. Montgomery Bird does an excellent job of humorously painting a picture of how aristocratic, antebellum Philadelphia was. When people think of Philadelphia during and immediately after slavery, they automatically assume that it was such a great place. It had its moments, but Sheppard Lee takes you inside of the pompous, lazy and dangerous society that was aristocratic Philly.
June 3, 2019
2019-04 - Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Robert Montgomery Bird (Author) 1836. 472 Pages.
Another in the Philadelphia Gothic series from the Rosenbach syllabus. This novel takes place in Jacksonian America of the early 1830’s. I enjoyed this novel. This is a witty look at, evaluation of, and commentary on the culture and society of America at the time. Some aspects though are not rooted in just that era of exuberance and possibility, some aspects are still with us … probably always have been, and probably always will be. From New Jersey, to Philadelphia, and to Virginia our main character, Sheppard Lee leads us into the city, into philanthropy, crime, slavery, rural life … giving us an almost 360 view of American society from the inside at the time. A method employed later by Upton Sinclair in his book, “The Jungle”. However, unlike that much later book the main character of this book, true to his name, shepherd’s us through by becoming an identity thief. Not an identity thief in the modern sense but through metempsychosis. He is able to project his soul … his essence, into dead bodies, reanimate them, and live their lives. He experiences their feelings, memories, illnesses, and proclivities all the while still maintaining his own sense of himself. A sometimes tongue in cheek look at the early Republic. Reads easily, sadly mostly a forgotten gem of national self-reflection.
Another in the Philadelphia Gothic series from the Rosenbach syllabus. This novel takes place in Jacksonian America of the early 1830’s. I enjoyed this novel. This is a witty look at, evaluation of, and commentary on the culture and society of America at the time. Some aspects though are not rooted in just that era of exuberance and possibility, some aspects are still with us … probably always have been, and probably always will be. From New Jersey, to Philadelphia, and to Virginia our main character, Sheppard Lee leads us into the city, into philanthropy, crime, slavery, rural life … giving us an almost 360 view of American society from the inside at the time. A method employed later by Upton Sinclair in his book, “The Jungle”. However, unlike that much later book the main character of this book, true to his name, shepherd’s us through by becoming an identity thief. Not an identity thief in the modern sense but through metempsychosis. He is able to project his soul … his essence, into dead bodies, reanimate them, and live their lives. He experiences their feelings, memories, illnesses, and proclivities all the while still maintaining his own sense of himself. A sometimes tongue in cheek look at the early Republic. Reads easily, sadly mostly a forgotten gem of national self-reflection.
August 19, 2024
Yes! the reader may stare, and bless his stars -- the manly John H. Higginson, who seemed to have no earthly care of trouble, and who was so little deficient in spirit that he could quarrel with a Jersey farmer while trespassing on his grounds, shoot his bull-dog, and take aim at his negro, had long since succumbed to the superior spirit, and acknowledged the irresponsible supremacy of his wife; in the field, and at a distance from his house, he was a man of spirit and figure, but at home the most submissive of the henpecked. Resistance against a petticoat government is, as all know, the most hopeless of resistance: a single man has often subverted a monarchy, and overturned a republic; but history has not yet recorded an instance of successful rebellion on the part of a married man against the tyranny of a wife. The tongue of a woman is the only true sceptre; for, unlike other emblems of authority, it is both the instrument of power and the axe of execution. John H. Higginson attempted no resistance against the rule of his wife; the few explosions of impatience of which he was now and then guilty, were punished with a rigour that awed him into discretion.
May 8, 2023
I don't have any idea how this ended up on my "to-read" shelf so many years ago, but there it is, and now it's done.
This is about a man who can essentially transfer his being into dead bodies and inhabit them until he wishes to transfer again. He goes through many changes until he realizes in the end that he was most content just being in his own body.
Recommended for anyone looking for some amusing antebellum meta material.
This is about a man who can essentially transfer his being into dead bodies and inhabit them until he wishes to transfer again. He goes through many changes until he realizes in the end that he was most content just being in his own body.
Recommended for anyone looking for some amusing antebellum meta material.
May 3, 2025
This book is ofcourse a “product of its time” and the selections of slavery are nauseating at best, but the actually narrative storytelling and the satire is brilliant. I found it compelling both as a politic and just as a story - starts slow but once you’re in I found it hard to put down at parts. For early American Gothicism it’s a real marker of the genre.
August 27, 2025
Pretty good. Very funny. Liked its questions about personal identity and humor about philosophy. The medical stuff was cool and honestly felt pretty unique but never suffocating. I like the overarching plot that leads him eventually back to his body, even if it’s pretty contrived and definitely not a masterwork of plotting.
May 16, 2016
#1 for Back to the Classics Challenge 2016: A 19th Century Classic
Novelists who wants to give a wide-angle view of a particular society have tended to use one of two approaches: either show a relatively large number of characters from varied backgrounds interactuing, directly and indirectly, within a limited space and / or time (Middlemarch) or the picaresque approach, where a single character experiences a series of changes in fortune that enables him or her to enter into a number of varied social situations (The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling). Robert Montgomery Bird has hit upon a third approach: serially present a number of characters from various degrees of society, but depict their experiences through a single narrative consciousness.
Sheppard Lee finds that he has the ability to transfer his consciousness into the body of a freshly dead corpse, reviving the dead person and subsequently living as that person. In the course of the novel, he inhabits 7 personalities, their individual stories each told in a separate "book". Each story seems to have been imagined in a different genre, adding narrative as well as social variety to the novel.
This novel provides a fascinating contemporary depiction of Jacksonian US society. It seems to have influenced later novels, perhaps Uncle Tom's Cabin, and almost certainly The Confidence-Man.
What kind of society does Sheppard Lee describe? Lee's incarnations manifest the extremes of wealth and poverty within the society. There are almost no characters who could be described as middle-class except the merchants and tradespeople. These are shown as risking financial setbacks, if not ruin, by extending credit to insolvent "gentlemen" in the hopes of increasing their business among the bon ton. Overlaying the stark distinction between rich and poor is a class system in which some are seen as socially superior to others; there are those with little or no money, such as Dawkins, who belong to the superior class, and others, such as Dawkins' rustic uncle, who have considerable fortunes but who have not yet and may never achieve membership in this class. Although Bird does not make it explicit, there are implications that besides manners and deportment, there are fairly rigid ethnic and sectarian boundaries controlling entry into the gentlemanly class; it seems unlikely either an Irishman or a Quaker would be considered eligible for inclusion.
In addition to divisions caused by class and wealth, there is a decided sectional divide shown in the second half of the novel. When Longstraw is transported from Pennsylvania to Virginia and branded as an "abolitionist", the legal protections he enjoyed in his home state disappear, and the meanings of the words law and liberty seem to have changed, highlighting ideological conflicts which were even then, a quarter century before the fact, steering the country toward civil war.
Novelists who wants to give a wide-angle view of a particular society have tended to use one of two approaches: either show a relatively large number of characters from varied backgrounds interactuing, directly and indirectly, within a limited space and / or time (Middlemarch) or the picaresque approach, where a single character experiences a series of changes in fortune that enables him or her to enter into a number of varied social situations (The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling). Robert Montgomery Bird has hit upon a third approach: serially present a number of characters from various degrees of society, but depict their experiences through a single narrative consciousness.
Sheppard Lee finds that he has the ability to transfer his consciousness into the body of a freshly dead corpse, reviving the dead person and subsequently living as that person. In the course of the novel, he inhabits 7 personalities, their individual stories each told in a separate "book". Each story seems to have been imagined in a different genre, adding narrative as well as social variety to the novel.
This novel provides a fascinating contemporary depiction of Jacksonian US society. It seems to have influenced later novels, perhaps Uncle Tom's Cabin, and almost certainly The Confidence-Man.
What kind of society does Sheppard Lee describe? Lee's incarnations manifest the extremes of wealth and poverty within the society. There are almost no characters who could be described as middle-class except the merchants and tradespeople. These are shown as risking financial setbacks, if not ruin, by extending credit to insolvent "gentlemen" in the hopes of increasing their business among the bon ton. Overlaying the stark distinction between rich and poor is a class system in which some are seen as socially superior to others; there are those with little or no money, such as Dawkins, who belong to the superior class, and others, such as Dawkins' rustic uncle, who have considerable fortunes but who have not yet and may never achieve membership in this class. Although Bird does not make it explicit, there are implications that besides manners and deportment, there are fairly rigid ethnic and sectarian boundaries controlling entry into the gentlemanly class; it seems unlikely either an Irishman or a Quaker would be considered eligible for inclusion.
In addition to divisions caused by class and wealth, there is a decided sectional divide shown in the second half of the novel. When Longstraw is transported from Pennsylvania to Virginia and branded as an "abolitionist", the legal protections he enjoyed in his home state disappear, and the meanings of the words law and liberty seem to have changed, highlighting ideological conflicts which were even then, a quarter century before the fact, steering the country toward civil war.
December 25, 2017
Eminently readable tale by an early 19th century author. The premise of a sort of transmigration allows the narrator to inhabit the lives/bodies of numerous different levels of society, and it proves an interesting portrait of the author's time and place.
April 16, 2023
read it for class. a bonkers book
May 21, 2024
Another read I did for class. I quite enjoyed it, it was quite funny. Although, I read this earlier in the year so I don't remember much of what I would want to say about it.
March 3, 2008
Originally published in the 1830's and recently reprinted, this book has held up pretty well.
April 15, 2008
This one was neat. Digestive apparatuses, dunning, science fiction, Dr. Feuerteufel, thinly veiled racism, and Quaker grammatical humor.
September 17, 2011
The combination of sarcasm and humor with pre-Civil War politics and perspectives was engaging. The writing style is from the early 1800's.
July 19, 2016
Read for 19th Century American Lit. Body swapping and a "grass is greener" moral, with interesting subtext about madness and satire of politics & religion.
September 11, 2009
I learned that old Philadelphia was just as snotty and dirty as current Philadelphia.
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