The charm of the essay lies in the fact that it is not formal, that it may be whimsical in its point of departure, and capricious in its ramblings after it has got itself under way. —Introduction Brander
The Oxford Book of American Essays Chosen by Brander Matthews From Franklin and Emerson to Whitman and Roosevelt, Brander Matthews expertly selected 32 essays on topics literary, political and humorous spanning over a century of this form’s development in America.
C ONTENTSBibliographic Record Introduction
NEW YORK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1914
The Ephemera: An Emblem of Human Life , by Benjamin FranklinThe Whistle , by Benjamin FranklinDialogue Between Franklin and the Gout , by Benjamin FranklinConsolation for the Old Bachelor , by Francis HopkinsonJohn Bull , by Washington IrvingThe Mutability of Literature , by Washington IrvingKean’s Acting , by Richard Henry DanaGifts , by Ralph Waldo EmersonUses of Great Men , by Ralph Waldo EmersonBuds and Bird-voices , by Nathaniel HawthorneThe Philosophy of Composition , by Edgar Allan PoeBread and the Newspaper , by Oliver Wendell HolmesWalking , by Henry David ThoreauOn a Certain Condescension in Foreigners , by James Russell LowellPreface to “Leaves of Grass ,” by Walt WhitmanAmericanism in Literature , by Thomas Wentworth HigginsonThackeray in America , by George William CurtisOur March to Washington , by Theodore WinthropCalvin (A Study of Character) , by Charles Dudley WarnerFive American Contributions to Civilization , by Charles William EliotI Talk of Dreams , by William Dean HowellsAn Idyl of the Honey-bee , by John BurroughsCut-off Copples’s , by Clarence KingThe Théâtre Francais , by Henry JamesTheocritus on Cape Cod , by Hamilton Wright MabieColonialism in the United States , by Henry Cabot LodgeNew York After Paris , by William Crary BrownellThe Tyranny of Things , by Edward Sandford MartinFree Trade vs. Protection in Literature , by Samuel McChord CrothersDante and the Bowery , by Theodore RooseveltThe Revolt of the Unfit , by Nicholas Murray ButlerOn Translating the Odes of Horace , by William Peterfield Trent
