James Russell Lowell. Works. Riverside Edition. 1890. 11 vols. Elmwood Edition. 1904. 16 vols. (Contains one more volume of literary essays, one more of poetry, and the three volumes of letters. C. E. Norton, editor. 1904.) These appeared in book form originally as follows: Class Poem, 1838; A Year’s Life, 1841; Poems, 1844; Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, 1845; Poems, Second Series, 1848; A Fable for Critics, 1848; The Biglow Papers, 1848; The Vision of Sir Launfal, 1848; Fireside Travels, 1864; The Biglow Papers, Second Series, 1867; Under the Willows and Other Poems, 1869; The Cathedral, 1870; Among my Books, 1870; My Study Windows, 1871; Among my Books, Second Series, 1876; Three Memorial Poems, 1877; Democracy and Other Addresses, 1887; Political Essays, 1888; Heartsease and Rue, 1888; Latest Literary Essays and Addresses, 1891; The Old English Dramatists, 1892; Last Poems, 1895; Impressions of Spain, 1899.

Bibliography

A volume compiled by George Willis Cooke. 1906. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 544–550.

Biography and Criticism

The standard life is by H. E. Scudder. 1901. 2 vols.

Benton, Joel. Lowell’s Americanism. Century, November, 1891.

Brownell, W. C. American Prose Masters. 1909.

Curtis, G. W. Orations and Addresses, Vol. III. 1894.

Godkin, E. L. The Reasons why Mr. Lowell should be Recalled. Nation, June 1, 1882.

Greenslet, Ferris. Lowell: his Life and Work. 1905.

Hale, E. E. Lowell and his Friends. 1898.

Hale, E. E., Jr. Lowell. 1899.

Higginson, T. W. Book and Heart. 1897.

Higginson, T. W. Old Cambridge. 1899.

Howells, W. D. A Personal Retrospect of Lowell. Scribner’s, September, 1900.

Howells, W. D. Literary Friends and Acquaintances. 1900.

James, Henry. Essays in London. 1893.

Mabie, H. W. My Study Fire. Ser. 2. 1894.

Meynell, Alice. The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays. 1893.

Norton, C. E. James Russell Lowell. Harper’s, May, 1893.

Norton, C. E. Letters of Lowell. Harper’s, September, 1893.

Scudder, H. E. Mr. Lowell as a Teacher. Scribner’s, November, 1891.

Stillman, W. J. The Autobiography of a Journalist, chap. xiv. 1901.

Stoddard, R. H. Recollections Personal and Literary. 1903.

Taylor, Bayard. Critical Essays. 1880.

Thorndike, A. H. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, Bk. II, chap. xxiv.

Underwood, F. H. Lowell; a Biographical Sketch. 1882.

Underwood, F. H. The Poet and the Man. 1893.

Wendell, Barrett. Stelligeri. 1893.

Wilkinson, W. C. A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters. 1874.

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS

Read “The Present Crisis” as determining the temper in which Lowell wrote his essay on Thoreau in view of their different reactions to the same national situation.

Read what Poe, Longfellow, and Lowell had to say concerning overemphasis on the American quality of American literature as noted on pages 177, 272, and 284. Is there any clear reason for this common dissent?

Compare the people discussed in Lowell’s “Fable for Critics” and in Poe’s “Literati,” published within two years of each other.

Read the connecting prose passages between the “Biglow Papers” for interesting evidence of Lowell’s attention to and knowledge of linguistic detail.

Read “Mason and Slidell: a Yankee Idyll” in “Biglow Papers,” Second Series, as a commentary on the Great European War.

Analyze the structure of a selected long poem and of a literary essay with a view to studying its firmness or looseness.

Read any one of Lowell’s five great odes and note the rhetorical fitness of meter and subject as contrasted with the artificiality of Lanier’s later poems.

Read “The Shepherd of King Admetus,” “Invita Minerva,” “The Origin of Didactic Poetry,” and the passages on Lowell and his fellow-poets for his comments on poetry and poetic art.