University of Minnesota pamphlets on American writers

With quick eye, ready tongue, and alert recognition of absurdities, Washington Irving sits quietly at both ends of the American literary spectrum -- an expatriate seeking reverently in Europe for sources of culture, but most effective in realizing American characters enmeshed in American ideals; and at the same time a native myth-maker who wove indigenous lore into comic tales which became fables. His country's first, but not her best, romantic historian; an early, but unsatisfying, impressionistic biographer; an exotic local colorist; a mildly boisterous, thigh-slapping, sidesplitting rural humorist;, a comic realist, a caricaturist. - p. 44.

A new, wide-ranging selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson's most influential writings, this edition captures the essence of American Transcendentalism and illustrates the breadth of one of America's greatest philosophers and poets.The writings featured here show Emerson as a protester against social conformity, a lover of nature, an activist for the rights of women and slaves, and a poet of great sensitivity. As explored in this volume, Emersonian thought is a unique blend of belief in individual freedom and in humility before the power of nature. "I become a transparent eyeball," Emerson wrote in Nature, "I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." Written over a century ago, this passage is a striking example of the passion and originality of Emerson's ideas, which continue to serve as a spiritual center and an ideological base for modern thought.From the Paperback edition.

"Henry Adams has been called an indispensable figure in American thought. Although he famously 'took his own life' in the autobiographical Education of Henry Adams, his letters - more intimate and unbuttoned, though hardly unselfconscious - are themselves indispensable for an understanding of the man and his times. This selection, the first based on the authoritative six-volume Letters, represents every major private and public event in Adam's life from 1858-1918 and confirms his reputation as one of the greatest letter writers of his century."--Book jacket.

Everything about Thomas Wolfe was outsize, extreme and in conflict. This biography, based in part on interviews and on documents owned by the Wolfe estate, emphasizes Wolfe's relationship to Aline Bernstein, his mistress, and Maxwell Perkins, his editor.