HEARTSEASE AND RUE 1888

AND

THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 1877

*****

BOTH BOOKS BY
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL




* TWO POPULAR FIRST EDITION WORKS BY FAMOUS POET *

Author James Russell Lowell
Well known as one of the group of authors sometimes called the Fireside Poets or the Schoolroom Poets, a group which also included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Because of their conservative approach to verse and the often blatant morality in their poetry, the very qualities that made them popular in their day, they have been out of favor throughout much of the twentieth century. Nevertheless members of the group like Lowell and Whittier, both ardent abolitionists, may not have seemed so conservative in the nineteenth century.

James Russell Lowell (1819�1891), American poet, critic, and editor, Cambridge, Mass. He was influential in revitalizing the intellectual life of New England in the mid-19th century. Educated at Harvard (B.A., 1838; LL.B., 1840), he abandoned law for literature. In 1843 he started a literary magazine, the Pioneer, which failed after two issues. The next year Lowell married Maria White, an ardent abolitionist and liberal, who encouraged him in his work. Lowell�s Poems (1844, 1846), A Fable for Critics (1848), The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848), and The Bigelow Papers (1848; 2d series, 1867) brought him considerable notice as a poet and critic. The best remembered of these are The Bigelow Papers, political and social lampoons written in Yankee dialect, which established his reputation as a satirist and a wit. In 1855, Lowell became professor of modern languages at Harvard, a position he held until 1876. In addition to teaching, he served as first editor (1857�61) of the Atlantic Monthly and later (1864�72) of the North American Review. In 1877 he was appointed minister to London, where he remained until 1885. While abroad Lowell did much to increase the respect of foreigners for American letters and American institutions; his speeches in England, published as Democracy and Other Addresses (1887), are among his best work.