Writing New England : An Anthology from the Puritans to the Present / Andrew Delbanco.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Delbanco, Andrew, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--New England.

LITERARY COLLECTIONS / General.

LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General.

New England--Civilization--Sources.

New England--Literary collections.

Local Subjects:

American literature--New England.

LITERARY COLLECTIONS / General.

LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General.

New England--Civilization--Sources.

New England--Literary collections.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (509 p.): 1 Frontispiz

Edition:

Reprint 2014

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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."

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHRONOLOGY

The Founding Idea

From A Model of Christian Charity / Winthrop, John

From Α Brief Recognition of New England's Errand into the Wilderness / Danforth, Samuel

God Speaks to the Rain

Preface to God's Determinations Touching His Elect / Taylor, Edward

From The Christian Philosopher / Mather, Cotton

The Spider Letter / Edwards, Jonathan

Forest Hymn / Bryant, William Cullen

From Nature / Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Dialogue / Fuller, Margaret

From Two Years before the Mast / Dana, Richard Henry

From American Notebooks / Hawthorne, Nathaniel

From The History of the Puritan Commonwealth / Oliver, Peter

Four Trees upon a Solitary Acre / Dickinson, Emily

From The Maine Woods / Τηоreau, Henry David

The Oldest Inhabitant - The Weather of New England / Twain, Mark

What Pragmatism Means / James, William

Out, Out- / Frost, Robert

The Snow Man / Stevens, Wallace

From The Outermost House / Beston, Henry

Mr. Edwards and the Spider / Lowell, Robert

Another Night in the Ruins / Kinnell, Galway

Mayflies / Wilbur, Richard

The Examined Self

From Christ the Fountain of Life / Cotton, John

Before the Birth of One of Her Children / Bradstreet, Anne

Personal Narrative / Edwards, Jonathan

I Should Have Been Too Glad, I See / Dickinson, Emily

From The Education of Henry Adams / Adams, Henry

From Darkwater / Du Bois, W. Ε. В.

To Earthward / Frost, Robert

In the Waiting Room / Bishop, Elizabeth

From The Richer, the Poorer / West, Dorothy

A Gallery of Portraits

From Uncle Toms Cabin / Stowe, Harriet Beecher

From The Morgesons / Stoddard, Elizabeth

From The Bostonians / James, Henry

Miniver Cheevy / Robinson, Edwin Arlington

From Literary Friends and Acquaintance / Howells, William Dean

The Cambridge Ladies / Cummings, Ε.Ε.

From The Late George Apley / Marquand, John P.

From The Last Hurrah / O'Connor, Edwin

Reunion / Cheever, John

Plumbing / Updike, John

From Parsons' Mill / Lewontin, Timothy

Education

From New England's First Fruits / Harvard College

Dogood Papers, No. 4 / Franklin, Benjamin

From Conversations with Children / Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer / Alcott, Bronson

From Christian Nurture / Bushnell, Horace

From Equality before the Law / Sumner, Charles

Inaugural Address / Eliot, Charles W.

The Function of a University / Chapman, John Jay

Sex Education / Fisher, Dorothy Canfield

Schoolmasters / Auchincloss, Louis / Mcphee, John / Wolff, Geoffrey

Dissident Dreamers

Letter to His Wife / Winthrop, John

From The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved / Otis, James

Letters / Adams, Abigail / Adams, John

Letters concerning Brook Farm / Ripley, George / Emerson, Ralph Waldo / Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Argument before the Supreme Court in the Amistad Case / Adams, John Quincy

The Lady in the White Dress, Whom I Helped into the Omnibus / Willis, Nathaniel Parker

Speech in the United States Senate / Webster, Daniel

From Three Sermons / Parker, Theodore

Battle-Hymn of the Republic / Howe, Julia Ward

Transcendental Wild Oats / Alcott, Louisa May

From What Social Classes Owe to Each Other / Sumner, William Graham

Natural Law / Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Broadcast Address / Kennedy, John F.

The Green Fields of the Mind / Giamatti, A . Bartlett

Strangers in the Promised Land

Examination of Susanna Martin / The Salem Court

Front Eulogy on King Philip / Apess, William

From My Bondage and My Freedom / Douglass, Frederick

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport / Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

From The Promised Land / Antin, Mary

From The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti / Frankfurter, Felix

Journal Letters / Matthiessen, F.О.

From Boston Adventure / Stafford, Jean

The Lottery / Jackson, Shirley

For the Union Dead / Lowell, Robert

From The Autobiography of Malcolm X / X, Malcolm / Haley, Alex

Her Kind / Sexton, Anne

From Death at an Early Age / Kozol, Jonathan

From Common Ground / Lukas, J. Anthony

The Abiding Sense of Place

Hamatreya / Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Α White Heron / Jewett, Sarah Orne

From The American Scene / James, Henry

Maine Speech / White, Ε.Β.

Letter to The Cape Codder / Allen, Fred

Scenic View / Hall, Donald

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

0-674-33548-1

OCLC:

1024025640