The Oxford Book of American Essays

Thirty-two essays spanning a century and a half of American writing, from Franklin's wit to Thoreau's walks and Poe on how a poem is made, chosen by Brander Matthews.

Gathered in 1914 by Brander Matthews, professor of literature at Columbia University, The Oxford Book of American Essays set out to show what American writers had added to the English essay. The selection runs from Benjamin Franklin and Francis Hopkinson in the eighteenth century, through Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry David Thoreau, James Russell Lowell, and Walt Whitman, to Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt, and the essayists of Matthews's own day.

Matthews deliberately pairs the lighter pieces with weightier discussion, so Franklin's 'The Whistle' and Hopkinson's 'Consolation for the Old Bachelor' sit alongside Emerson's 'Uses of Great Men', Poe's 'The Philosophy of Composition', Thoreau's 'Walking', Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass, and Roosevelt's 'Dante and the Bowery'. Read together, they form a portrait of the young republic thinking aloud about literature, nature, manners, and itself, and a companion that rewards being opened at random.

This edition features:

• Thirty-two essays printed in full, from Benjamin Franklin to Theodore Roosevelt and Nicholas Murray Butler
• Includes Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Thoreau, Whitman, Henry James, and Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Selected and introduced by Brander Matthews, professor of literature at Columbia University
• Pairs light, witty pieces with serious reflections on American life, letters, and character
• An essential anthology for readers of classic American prose and students of the essay form