19th Century Books - Page 12

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

The book, remakable, the reviews? I am confused. 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Special preview note:

I have to say these reviews confuse me because I see nothing about Stephen Mitchell in the book I hold in my hands. I don't know where the reference comes from at all, so I am going to write as if I don't know what the reviewers are using as a reference to Mitchell... and now I see, those reviewers were reading an entirely different version of the book - so if you are interested in the Dover edition, my review stands. If you are looking at the Shambala edition, what I say still stands, for the most part... except I haven't read the Mitchell edits and now I understand some of the disdain! And it makes me VERY curious, would like to read both versions side-by-side.)

From the preface: This dover edition, first published in 2001, is a unabridged republication from the first 1855 edition of "Leaves of Grass."

I sat here, today, re-reading some of the sections I had highlighted from my first read of this epic-length-poem. I wondered, "What would the world be like if each of us took the time to write a 'Song of Myself' according to our own witness of the world we live within?

Walt Whitman does exactly that in this poem - he doesn't seek to be understood, he doesn't seek to please the reader, he is simply being present to his world and then capture his meandering path into words and serve it onto the page.

Then it is up to us, as the readers, to take our spoon-fuls of Whitman and savor each one.

There is much to be learned, experienced, enjoyed, discovered in these words within this very slim volume. Savor each one and consider writing your own song.

Now I am off to begin mine.

Editorial Review:

One of Walt Whitman's most loved and greatest poems, "Song of Myself" is an optimistic and inspirational look at the world. Originally published as part of "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, "Song of Myself" is as accessible and important today as when it was first written. Read "Song of Myself" and enjoy a true poetic masterpiece.

Daisy Miller

Henry James

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

It was in Rome during the autumn of 1877; a friend then living there but settled now in a South less weighted with appeals and memories happened to mention -- which she might perfectly not have done -- some simple and uninformed American lady of the previous winter, whose young daughter, a child of nature and of freedom, accompanying her from hotel to hotel, had "picked up" by the wayside, with the best conscience in the world, a good-looking Roman, of vague identity, astonished at his luck, yet (so far as might be, by the pair) all innocently, all serenely exhibited and introduced: this at least till the occurrence of some small social check, some interrupting incident, of no great gravity or dignity, and which I forget I had never heard, save on this showing, of the amiable but not otherwise eminent ladies, who weren't in fact named, I think, and whose case had merely served to point a familiar moral; and it must have been just their want of salience that left a margin for the small pencil-mark inveterately signifying, in such connections, "Dramatize, dramatize!" The result of my recognizing a few months later the sense of my pencil-mark was the short chronicle of DAISY MILLER. -- Henry James

Walden, or, Life in the Woods

Henry David Thoreau

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Case Studies in Critical Controversy)

Mark Twain

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Editorial Review:

Like its popular predecessor, this critical edition is designed for "teaching the conflicts" surrounding Mark Twain’s classic novel. It reprints the 1885 text of the first American edition (with a portfolio of illustrations) along with critical essays representing major critical and cultural controversies surrounding the work. The novel and essays are supported by distinctive editorial material — including introductions to critical conflict in literary studies, to Twain’s life and work, and to each critical controversy highlighted in this edition — that helps students grapple not only with the novel’s critical issues but also with cultural debates about literature itself. In addition to several new critical essays, the second edition includes an appendix on how to argue about the novel so that students may more effectively enter the critical conversation about its issues.

The Prairie (Penguin Classics)

James Fenimore Cooper

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

a nice surprise 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

I chose to read this series in chronological order and not the order in which they were written. This being the third to be written but last in order, I read this one last. I must say that I was surprised at how enjoyable a read it was seeing that the last two I read (The Pathfinder and The Pioneers) were pretty disappointing. This novel has excellent descriptions of the prairie setting and the characters involved without weighing the reader down with page upon page of needless descriptions or rhetoric. The story line was very well-conceived, plausable, and coherent; qualities which not many books can boast. Of course, this being the last book in the series, I was concerned about how the author would conclude the saga of Natty Bumpo. Not wanting to spoil anything, I must say that I was very impressed with the way Natty's character was handled. There is nothing worse than reading five or so books and having the author ruin them all by messing up the character at the end. No need to worry here. This novel pretty much has all the ingredients which make The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans exceptional: indian warfare, revenge, some romance, the differences and similarities between Natty's and the American Indian's religious views and philosophy on life, and of course just some good ol' action. I would recommend reading this series in chronological order, but if you do have to skip one of them, The Pioneers can be that one and you would not really miss a beat.

Editorial Review:

As part of the series of "Leatherstocking" tales, this story chronicles the career of Natty Bumppo - hunter, scout, pathfinder and trapper, and aims to reflect the aspirations and disappointments of America's expansionist movement. Cooper (1879-1851) is also author of "The Last of the Mohicans".

Roughing It (Mark Twain Library)

Mark Twain

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

o Includes all 304 first-edition illustrations by True Williams, Edward F. Mullen, and others

o Provides the first and only text that adheres to the author's wishes in details of wording, spelling, and punctuation, restored from original sources.

o Features expert annotation, specially prepared maps, facsimile manuscript pages, and other supplementary documents

o Reproduces the text and notes of the Mark Twain Project's 1993 edition, winner of the Modern Language Association Prize for a "Distinguished Scholarly Edition"

Mark Twain's humorous account of his six years in Nevada, San Francisco, and the Sandwich Islands is a patchwork of personal anecdotes and tall tales, many of them told in the "vigorous new vernacular" of the West. Selling seventy five thousand copies within a year of its publication in 1872, Roughing It was greeted as a work of "wild, preposterous invention and sublime exaggeration" whose satiric humor made "pretension and false dignity ridiculous." Meticulously restored from a variety of original sources, the text is the first to adhere to the author's wishes in thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation, and includes all of the 304 first-edition illustrations. With its comprehensive and illuminating notes and supplementary materials, which include detailed maps tracing Mark Twain's western travels, this Mark Twain Library Roughing It must be considered the standard edition for readers and students of Mark Twain.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Oxford World's Classics)

Mark Twain

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, originally published in 1884. It is the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Ernest Hemingway (and many others) called it the greatest American novel ever. Huck Finn picks up right where Tom Sawyer left off - Huck's abusive father appears to lay claim to Huck's fortune, so Huck fakes his own death and goes down the Mississippi River with Jim, the escaped slave.

Much like Tom Sawyer, there's not a lot of plot going on here most of the time, and that's okay, because Twain's writing is extremely entertaining. Twain has a good old time mocking social conventions, and the novel is gripping almost all the way through. Hemingway was right: the end of Huck Finn is poor. After Jim is abducted and Tom Sawyer reappears, things just get silly, not to mention highly convenient (And Tom Sawyer here is just as immature as he ever was, reinforcing that no real maturation occurred in Tom Sawyer, and that that book really isn't a coming-of-age story in the truest sense).

Twain has made Huck the narrator. On the whole, this works, although it gets tiresome to read Huck's dialect sometimes. Twain-as-narrator is definitely missed here. Nobody could write a clever sentence like Twain, and most of that is lost here, although occasionally Huck will turn one (and by doing so break character, but that's the price you pay).

Huck Finn has been exceedingly controversial because of the extensive use of the n-word. So is the novel racist? Certainly the characters have the racism of the day ingrained in them - in that sense, it is racist. But more important to most people is whether Twain was racist; that is, whether he put his own personal racism in the book. That is harder to determine, especially since Twain has made Huck the narrator. Perhaps the fairest thing to say is that Twain was genuinely criticizing racism, but the way in which he portrayed Jim and the other characters contains some residual racism of its own.

So is Huck Finn America's greatest novel? Well, maybe not. But it's definitely up there.

Editorial Review:

Called "the veriest trash" by a member of the Concord, Massachusetts Library Board that banned the novel when it was first published, Huckleberry Finn has come to be viewed, as H.L. Mencken put it, as "one of the great masterpieces of the world." Ernest Hemingway wrote that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." A daringly ironic attack on racism American-style, Twain's story of what he once called a "sound heart" triumphing over a "deformed conscience" is poignant, powerful, and fresh. It is no wonder that this extraordinary book continues to captivate readers around the world. This handsome Oxford World's Classic edition uses the reliable 1885 text and includes in-depth, up-to-date editorial apparatus.

The Golden Bowl (Oxford World's Classics)

Henry James

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Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Published in 1904, The Golden Bowl is the last completed novel of Henry James. In it, the widowed American Adam Verver is in Europe with his daughter Maggie. They are rich, finely appreciative of European art and culture, and deeply attached to each other. Maggie has all the innocent charm of so many of Jamess young American heroines. She is engaged to Amerigo, an impoverished Italian prince; he must marry money, and as his name suggests, an American heiress is the perfect solution. The golden bowl, first seen in a London curio shop, is used emblematically throughout the novel. Not solid gold but gilded crystal, the perfect surface conceals a flaw; it is symbolic of the relationship between the main characters and of the world in which they move.
Also in Europe is an old friend of Maggies, Charlotte Stant, a girl of great charm and independence, and Maggie is blindly ignorant of the fact that she and the prince are lovers. Maggie and Amerigo are married and have a son, but Maggie remains dependent for real intimacy on her father, and she and Amerigo grow increasingly apart. Feeling that her father has suffered a loss through her marriage, Maggie decides to find him a wife, and her choice falls on Charlotte. Charlottes affair with the prince continues and Adam Verver seems to her to be a suitable and convenient match. When Maggie herself finally comes into possession of the golden bowl, the flaw is revealed to her, and, inadvertently, the truth about Amerigo and Charlotte. Fanny Assingham (an older woman, aware of the truth from the beginning) deliberately breaks the bowl, and this marks the end of Maggies innocence. She is no pathetic heroine-victim, however. Abstaining from outcry and outrage she instead takes the reins and maneuvers people and events. She still wants to be with Amerigo, but he must continue to be worth having and they must all be saved further humiliations and indignities. To be a wife she must cease to be a daughter; Adam Verver and the unhappy Charlotte are banished forever to America, and the new Maggie will establish a real marriage with Amerigo.

The Annotated Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A sumptuous new edition of the great American novel.

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," Ernest Hemingway once declared. First published in 1885, the book has delighted millions of readers, while simultaneously riling contemporary sensibilities, and is still banned in many schools and libraries. Now, Michael Patrick Hearn, author of the best-selling The Annotated Wizard of Oz, thoroughly reexamines the 116-year heritage of that archetypal American boy, Huck Finn, and follows his adventures along every bend of the mighty Mississippi River. Hearn's copious annotations draw on primary sources including the original manuscript, Twain's revisions and letters, and period accounts. Reproducing the original E. W. Kemble illustrations from the first edition, as well as countless archival photographs and drawings, some of them previously unpublished, The Annotated Huckleberry Finn is a book no family's library can do without; it may well prove to be the classic edition of the great American novel. 274 illustrations, two-color throughout.

Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The North Wasn't Much Better 3 out of 5 stars.
11 of 18 people found this review helpful.

The female child of a white female outcast and a black freeman, the author gives a detailed account of what it was like being raised by a white family in the pre-Civil War North of the United States (a household where she was abandoned by her mother at 3). This biography gives a general idea of what a Negro's life in the North was like -- and it was not much different from that life of a slave in the South. The mistress of the house was brutal beyond measure, but many of the other family members were reasonably kind (though not kind of enough to put a stop to the abuse), and it makes one shudder to think of what could have happened in a family who had nothing but Negro-haters in it. Still, she recounts how she got a small measure of schooling, and how she eventually became a Christian (something which the lady of the house -- a Christian herself -- opposed) and her eventual marriage. An upsetting story, it is nevertheless of much more value than "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as it was told from the point of view of the victim and not a sympathetic white.

Editorial Review:

Our Nig is a classic of African American Literature that has proven to be an enduring contribution to our understanding of free blacks in the nineteenth century. Originally published in 1859, it was neglected for over a hundred years and is now the subject of renewed scholarly interest. A fascinating fusion of two literary modes of the nineteenth century—the sentimental novel and the slave narrative—Our Nig traces the trials and tribulations of Frado, a mulatto girl who grows up as an indentured servant to a white Massachusetts family. And now, as new scholarship sheds light on the author's life, our appreciation for Our Nig is enhanced.

With a new afterword by Barbara A. White.