Ivory, Apes and Peacocks

James Huneker's 1887 collection announces the arrival of a critic who refused to wait for permission to pronounce greatness. These essays on Joseph Conrad, Walt Whitman, and Jules Laforgue - among others - form an audacious portrait gallery of the artists remaking modern art at the turn of the century. Huneker was among the first American critics to champion Conrad, recognizing in the Polish-born seaman a prose stylist of unprecedented psychological depth, while his essays on Whitman confront the poet's controversial largeness head-on rather than flinching. The title itself, drawn from Solomon's treasures, signals the exotic and the precious: Huneker is collecting the rarest spirits of his age, the creators who made language sing in unfamiliar keys. Written with verve, polemical edge, and genuine reverence for artistic bravery, these essays capture a moment when the old orders were crumbling and new aesthetic territories demanded mapping. For readers who want to understand how modernism found its American voice, this remains an essential time capsule of critical passion.