Prose Works 1892 Volume Ii

General Series Editors: Gay Wilson Allen and Sculley Bradley Originally published between 1961 and 1984, and now available in paperback for the first time, the critically acclaimed Collected Writings of Walt Whitman captures every facet of one of America's most important poets. The two-volume set of Prose Works 1892 proves that Whitman’s prose has a quality no less original and distinctive than his poetry. Volume II of Prose Works 1892 contains three of Whitman’s prose collections, Collect, November Boughs, and Good-Bye My Fancy. Whitman’s thoughts on a wide variety of topics are laid out in such essays as “Death of Abraham Lincoln,” “Some War Memoranda,” and “American National Literature.” Seven pieces not included in the original 1892 edition of the Complete Prose Works are also presented here, including “A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads.“ In his preface, Stovall describes why the pieces were not part of Whitman’s printing and lays out his reasons for including them in this volume.

General Series Editors: Gay Wilson Allen and Sculley Bradley Originally published between 1961 and 1984, and now available in paperback for the first time, the critically acclaimed Collected Writings of Walt Whitman captures every facet of one of America's most important poets. The two-volume set of Prose Works 1892 proves that Whitman's prose has a quality no less original and distinctive than his poetry. Originally written and published as newspaper dispatches, Specimen Days is a collection of Whitman’s on-the-spot notes of his experiences as a volunteer nurse in the hospitals in and around Washington during the Civil War. It contains, too, his nature studies, jotted down at the Stafford Farm near Camden during the years of convalescence after his paralysis in 1873. In these records of his observations, Whitman’s love and devoted care of the individual soldiers overshadow his concern for the course of the war itself and his interest in its major personalities. He sees, above all else, the wounded men in front of him, and these he describes in the simple, direct language that unmistakably marks his poetry as well.

This collection of Geoffrey Hill's criticism spans the length of his career as a pre-eminent poet-critic. The topics range widely across English literature since the Renaissance and include extended studies of major writers as well as essays which confront the problems of language and the nature of value.

Presents a complete reference to the life and works of Walt Whitman.

Staged Readings studies the social consequences of 19th-century America’s two most prevalent leisure forms: theater and popular literature. In the midst of watershed historical developments—including numerous waves of immigration, two financial Panics, increasing wealth disparities, and the Civil War—American theater and literature were developing at unprecedented rates. Playhouses became crowded with new spectators, best-selling novels flew off the shelves, and, all the while, distinct social classes began to emerge. While the middle and upper classes were espousing conservative literary tastes and attending family matinees and operas, laborers were reading dime novels and watching downtown spectacle melodramas like Nymphs of the Red Sea and The Pirate’s Signal or, The Bridge of Death!!! As audiences traveled from the reading parlor to the playhouse (and back again), they accumulated a vital sense of social place in the new nation. In other words, culture made class in 19th-century America. Based in the historical archive, Staged Readings presents a panoramic display of mid-century leisure and entertainment. It examines best-selling novels, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and George Lippard’s The Quaker City. But it also analyzes a series of sensational melodramas, parlor theatricals, doomsday speeches, tableaux vivant displays, curiosity museum exhibits, and fake volcano explosions. These oft-overlooked spectacles capitalized on consumers’ previous cultural encounters and directed their social identifications. The book will be particularly appealing to those interested in histories of popular theater, literature and reading, social class, and mass culture.