Synopses & Reviews
The story of New England writing begins some 400 years ago, when a group of English Puritans crossed the Atlantic believing that God had appointed them to bring light and truth to the New World. Over the centuries since, the people of New England have produced one of the great literary traditions of the world--an outpouring of poetry, fiction, history, memoirs, letters, and essays that records how the original dream of a godly commonwealth has been both sustained and transformed into a modern secular culture enriched by people of many backgrounds and convictions.
Writing New England, edited by the literary scholar and critic Andrew Delbanco, is the most comprehensive anthology of this tradition, offering a full range of thought and style. The major figures of New England literature--from John Winthrop and Anne Bradstreet to Emerson, Hawthorne, Dickinson, and Thoreau, to Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and John Updike--are of course represented, often with fresh and less familiar selections from their works. But Writing New England also samples a wide range of writings including Puritan sermons, court records from the Salem witch trials, Felix Frankfurter's account of the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, William Apess's eulogy for the Native American King Philip, pamphlets and poems of the Revolution and the Civil War, natural history, autobiographical writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and Malcolm X, Mary Antin's account of the immigrant experience, John F. Kennedy's broadcast address on civil rights, and A. Bartlett Giamatti's memoir of a Red Sox fan.
Organized thematically, this anthology provides a collective self-portrait of the New England mind. With an introductory essay on the origins of New England, a detailed chronology, and explanatory headnotes for each selection, the book is a welcoming introduction to a great American literary tradition and a treasury of vivid writing that defines what it has meant, over nearly four centuries, to be a New Englander.
From the Preface:
"Imposing one unitary meaning on New England would be as foolish as it would be unconvincing. Yet one purpose of this book is to convey some sense of New England's continuities and coherence...Not all the writers in this book are major figures (a few are barely known), but all are here because of the bracing freshness with which they describe places, people, ideas, and events to which, even if the subject is familiar, we are re-awakened."
Review
Who and what made New England the nation's intellectual and literary center is apparent in this expansive collection of writings by the abiding masters and luminaries of the day...[Writing New England] illustrate[s] the nuances of the "hope and disillusion, confidence and self-doubt" that inform the New England mind...In each [section], writers explore the attitudes and characteristics that came to define the region: an ideal of justice, an intolerance of newcomers, and a "proprietary intimacy" with the land...This [book] is a smorgasbord; we are unlikely to see its kind again soon. Kirkus Reviews
Review
Handsomely produced...[and] imaginatively done...[This] anthology succeeds admirably in conveying, in Delbanco's words, "how New Englanders have come to live in different and distinct regions of cultural inheritance." It manages also, in its inclusions and rediscoveries, to extend Thoreau's remark in his "Ktaadn" section from The Maine Woods printed here: "I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new this country still is." David M. Shribman - Boston Globe
Review
Readers concerned that a New England anthology of writing would slip into mawkish paeans to autumn and Yankee wisdom should know that Delbanco does not shy from the darker aspects of our region and its history...Delbanco's business, at least in book form, has always been America--its culture, history and literature: whether he is anthologizing Emerson, Lincoln or the Puritans, or writing about American religion...Delbanco ensures that the path between past and present remains open and well-trod. Rae Francoeur - Salem Evening News
Review
There is nothing now in print quite like Writing New England. Three things make the book stand out: its enlargement of one's sense of the varieties of people who, over time, have inhabited New England; its insights into one region's contributions to the country at large; and its sheer readability. Strongly recommended. Tim Lemire - Concord Beacon
Review
There is nothing now in print quite like Writing New England. Three things make the book stand out: its enlargement of one's sense of the varieties of people who, over time, have inhabited New England; its insights into one region's contributions to the country at large; and its sheer readability. Strongly recommended.
Review
Despite the proliferation of regional studies, particularly of the American South, there are relatively few collections of or studies about New England writing. Perhaps it's because New England was the original region. Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James are not generally considered New Englanders so much as Americans. Delbanco, a renowned scholar of the Puritan experience in America (author of The Puritan Ordeal), wants to call attention to the fact that these writers were not simply from New England but of it. In this beautifully conceived collection, Delbanco has interspersed with unchallenged figures such as Thoreau and Hawthorne a few pieces that have been all but lost to the general reading public...This is an excellent gathering of letters, poems, stories, essays and excerpts from novels and histories. Publishers Weekly
Review
Writing New England is a readable, usable, invaluable gift to readers of American literature and to those who appreciate the virtues of anthology...The literary landscape in New England is precious in its beauty; harsh in its honesty, and soaring in its genius. Merely by possessing this book we stake a claim in the bounty. William H. Pritchard - Commonweal
Review
This broad selection gives a deeper understanding of the flavor of New England writing, be it artistic, religious, legal, or political. Well-known writers, such as Thoreau, Emerson, and Dickinson, are balanced with writers less well known outside the region, and male voices are balanced by female. Introductory head notes to each section delineate the theme explored, placing the selections into context, while those for each selection provide biographical information and critical context. Karen E.S. Lempert
Review
A book to keep by the reading light for years to come...The selections are both expected old friends and eclectic new neighbors, each with an introduction that suggests how it adds to an understanding of "the New England mind." Library Journal
Review
Now arrives the definitive New England reader, a book written for the New England booster, the New England admirer, and, of course, that character indigenous to these parts, the New England reader...[Andrew Delbanco's] luminous opening essay distills one of the great truths about great New England writing: It is produced by 'the sort of mind that, with an acute sense of its own fallibility, seeks moral knowledge in the wisdom literature of the past.' But Delbanco's greatest gift is his sense of judgment. He knows, for example, that it is impossible to understand New England...without a passing acquaintance with Henry David Thoreau, Henry Adams, Henry James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow--and, lest we forget, Henry Beston. He knows, too, that there is a difference between choosing the best known and the best representative selection of a writer's work...One of the great New England virtues, besides a sense of the vanity of human wishes, is thrift, and here Delbanco has produced a metaphor of the region. There is not a page wasted in this volume, not an entry without a reason. Michael Kenney - Boston Globe
Review
Andrew Delbanco's attractive anthology, which offers a judicious selection of material, pertinent both for readers who are new to the writing of the region and for those who it well. As Delbanco explains in his preface, he has tried to keep the anthology in line with his conviction that New England itself includes "different and distinct regions of cultural inheritance." He also works hard to show how the continuities in New England writing are inflected differently by African-Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, working-class Americans and American women, particularly when set along-side the classic texts produced by privileged white men. The anthology is wonderfully diverse. D. D. Kummings - Choice
About the Author
Andrew Delbanco holds the Mendelson Family Chair of American Studies and is Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Among his many publications are The Puritan Ordeal and The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope (both from Harvard).
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chronology
The Founding Idea
John Winthrop * From A Model of Christian Charity
Samuel Danforth * From A Brief Recognition of New England's Errand into the Wilderness
God Speaks to the Rain
Edward Taylor * Preface to God's Determinations Touching His Elect
Cotton Mather * From The Christian Philosopher
Jonathan Edwards * The Spider Letter
William Cullen Bryant * "Forest Hymn"
Ralph Waldo Emerson * From Nature
Margaret Fuller * "Dialogue"
Richard Henry Dana * From Two Years before the Mast
Nathaniel Hawthorne * From American Notebooks
Peter Oliver * From The History of the Puritan Commonwealth
Emily Dickinson * "Four Trees upon a Solitary Acre"
Henry David Thoreau * From The Maine Woods
Mark Twain * "The Oldest Inhabitant-The Weather of New England"
William James * "What Pragmatism Means"
Robert Frost * "Out, Out-"
Wallace Stevens * "The Snow Man"
Henry Beston * From The Outermost House
Robert Lowell * "Mr. Edwards and the Spider"
Galway Kinnell * "Another Night in the Ruins"
Richard Wilbur * "Mayflies"
The Examined Self
John Cotton * From Christ the Fountain of Life
Anne Bradstreet * "Before the Birth of One of Her Children"
Jonathan Edwards * Personal Narrative
Emily Dickinson * "I Should Have Been Too Glad, I See"
Henry Adams * From The Education of Henry Adams
W. E. B. Du Bois * From Darkwater
Robert Frost * "To Earthward"
Elizabeth Bishop * "In the Waiting Room"
Dorothy West * From The Richer, the Poorer
A Gallery of Portraits
Harriet Beecher Stowe * From Uncle Tom's Cabin
Elizabeth Stoddard * From The Morgesons
Henry James * From The Bostonians
Edwin Arlington Robinson * "Miniver Cheevy"
William Dean Howells * From Literary Friends and Acquaintance
E. E. Cummings * "The Cambridge Ladies"
John P. Marquand * From The Late George Apley
Edwin O'Connor * From The Last Hurrah
John Cheever * "Reunion"
John Updike * "Plumbing"
Timothy Lewontin * From Parsons' Mill
Education
Harvard College * From New England's First Fruits
Benjamin Franklin * Dogood Papers, No. 4
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and A. Bronson Alcott * From Conversations with Children
Horace Bushnell * From Christian Nurture
Charles Sumner * "Equality before the Law"
Charles W. Eliot * Inaugural Address
John Jay Chapman * "The Function of a University"
Dorothy Canfield Fisher * "Sex Education"
Louis Auchincloss, John McPhee, and Geoffrey Wolff * Schoolmasters
Dissident Dreamers
John Winthrop * Letter to His Wife
James Otis * From The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved
Abigail Adams and John Adams * Letters
George Ripley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne * Letters concerning Brook Farm
John Quincy Adams * Argument before the Supreme Court in the Amistad Case
Nathaniel Parker Willis * "The Lady in the White Dress, Whom I Helped into the Omnibus"
Daniel Webster * Speech in the United States Senate
Theodore Parker * From Three Sermons
Julia Ward Howe * "Battle-Hymn of the Republic"
Louisa May Alcott * Transcendental Wild Oats
William Graham Sumner * From What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. * "Natural Law"
John F. Kennedy * Broadcast Address
A. Bartlett Giamatti * "The Green Fields of the Mind"
Strangers in the Promised Land
The Salem Court * Examination of Susanna Martin
William Apess * From Eulogy on King Philip
Frederick Douglass * From My Bondage and My Freedom
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow * "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport"
Mary Antin * From The Promised Land
Felix Frankfurter * From "The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti"
F. O. Matthiessen * Journal Letters
Jean Stafford * From Boston Adventure
Shirley Jackson * "The Lottery"
Robert Lowell * "For the Union Dead"
Malcolm X and Alex Haley * From The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Anne Sexton * "Her Kind"
Jonathan Kozol * From Death at an Early Age
J. Anthony Lukas * From Common Ground
The Abiding Sense of Place
Ralph Waldo Emerson * "Hamatreya"
Sarah Orne Jewett * "A White Heron"
Henry James * From The American Scene
E. B. White * "Maine Speech"
Fred Allen * Letter to The Cape Codder
Donald Hall * "Scenic View"
Acknowledgments
Index