Three American Poets - Softcover

Robinson, Edwin; Tuckerman, Frederick; Melville, Herman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140436863 ISBN 13: 9780140436860

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2003

Three great American poets, all of whom preferred the solitary life, and yet each responded, in very different ways, to the greatest social event of their times: the challenge of living in a country recovering from civil war. The selection from Melville aims to show the range of his shorter verse, from the public poet intensely concerned with the Civil War and its meaning for humanity, to the private poet, as he withdrew from the eyes of the world. Robinson's quintessential and much anthologised famous poems can be read set alongside the less widely-read pieces also included here. Tuckerman is a neglected poet, whose poems reflect his friendship with Tennyson and his grief for the loss of his wife.

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About the Author:

Herman Melville (1819-91) became in his late twenties a highly successful author of exotic novels based on his experiences as a sailor - writing in quick succession Typee, Omoo, Redburn and White-Jacket. However, his masterpiece Moby-Dick was met with incomprehension and the other later works which are now the basis of his reputation, such as Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Confidence-Man, were failures. Melville stopped writing fiction and the rest of his long life was spent first as a lecturer and then, for nineteen years, as a customs official in New York City. He was also the author of the immensely long poem Clarel, which was similarly dismissed. At the end of his life he wrote Billy Budd, Sailor which was published posthumously in 1924.

Synopsis:

This volume presents work from three great American poets, all of whom preferred the solitary life; yet each responded, in very different ways, to the greatest social event of their times, the challenge of living in a country recovering from a civil war. The selection from Melville aims to show the range of his shorter verse, from the public poet intensely concerned with the Civil War and its meaning for humanity, to the private poet, as he withdrew from the eyes of the world. Robinson's quintessential and much anthologized famous poems can be read alongside the less widely-read pieces also included here. Tuckerman is a neglected poet, whose poems reflect his friendship with Tennyson and his grief for the loss of his wife.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.