Literary and Social Essays

George William Curtis moved comfortably between America's literary salons and its political arenas, a co-founder of the Republican Party, friend to poets, and one of the most elegant essayists of his generation. This collection gathers his finest literary portraits: intimate, discerning essays on Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Washington Irving. The book opens in Concord, Massachusetts, that small New England village where American literature seemed to spring from the very soil, and traces the connections between landscape, history, and imagination. Curtis writes with the authority of someone who knew these writers personally, offering criticism that feels like conversation. His social essays extend this inquiry into the larger questions of American identity, what it meant to be a citizen of a nation still inventing itself. These are essays meant to be read slowly, with pleasure, by anyone who believes literary criticism can be its own art form.