The Oxford Book of American Essays
By Brander Matthews
Length17h 37m
About this audiobook
Excerpt: "The customary antithesis between "American" literature and "English" literature is unfortunate and misleading in that it seems to exclude American authors from the noble roll of those who have contributed to the literature of our mother-tongue. Of course, when we consider it carefully we cannot fail to see that the literature of a language is one and indivisible and that the nativity or the domicile of those who make it matters nothing. Just as Alexandrian literature is Greek, so American literature is English; and as Theocritus demands inclusion in any account of Greek literature, so Thoreau cannot be omitted from any history of English literature as a whole. The works of Anthony Hamilton and Rousseau, Mme. de Staël and M. Maeterlinck are not more indisputably a part of the literature of the French language than the works of Franklin and Emerson, of Hawthorne and Poe are part of the literature of the English language. Theocritus may never have set foot on the soil of Greece, and Thoreau never adventured himself on the Atlantic to visit the island-home of his ancestors; yet the former expressed himself in Greek and the latter in English,—and how can either be neglected in any comprehensive survey of the literature of his own tongue? None the less is it undeniable that there is in Franklin and Emerson, in Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, whatever their mastery of the idiom they inherited in common with Steele and Carlyle, with Browning and Lamb, an indefinable and intangible flavor which distinguishes the first group from the second. The men who have set down the feelings and the thoughts, the words and the deeds of the inhabitants of the United States have not quite the same outlook on life that we find in the men who have made a similar record in the British Isles. The social atmosphere is not the same on the opposite shores of the Western ocean; and the social organization is different in many particulars. For all that American literature is,—in the apt phrase of Mr. Howells,—"a condition of English literature," nevertheless it is also distinctively American. American writers are as loyal to the finer traditions of English literature as British writers are; they take an equal pride that they are also heirs of Chaucer and Dryden and subjects of King Shakespeare; yet they cannot help having the note of their own nationality."
Audiobook details
GenreGeneral Fiction
Length17 hrs 37 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateApr 6, 2022
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1INTRODUCTION
18THACKERAY IN AMERICA GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
2THE EPHEMERA: AN EMBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE TO MADAME BRILLON, OF PASSY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
19OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON THEODORE WINTHROP THROUGH THE CITY
3THE WHISTLE TO MADAME BRILLON BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
20CALVIN A STUDY OF CHARACTER CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
4DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANKLIN AND THE GOUT
21FIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
5CONSOLATION FOR THE OLD BACHELOR FRANCIS HOPKINSON
22I TALK OF DREAMS W. D. Howells
Show all chaptersShow less
6JOHN BULL WASHINGTON IRVING
23AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE JOHN BURROUGHS
7THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY WASHINGTON IRVING
24CUT-OFF COPPLES’S CLARENCE KING
8KEAN’S ACTING RICHARD HENRY DANA
25THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS HENRY JAMES
9GIFTS RALPH WALDO EMERSON
26THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
10USES OF GREAT MEN RALPH WALDO EMERSON
27COLONIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES[9] HENRY CABOT LODGE
11BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
28NEW YORK AFTER PARIS W. C. Brownell
12THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION EDGAR ALLAN POE
29THE TYRANNY OF THINGS EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN
13BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
30FREE TRADE VS. PROTECTION IN LITERATURE SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS
14WALKING HENRY DAVID THOREAU
31DANTE AND THE BOWERY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
15ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS[5] JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
32THE REVOLT OF THE UNFIT NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
16PREFACE TO "LEAVES OF GRASS" 1855 WALT WHITMAN
33ON TRANSLATING THE ODES OF HORACE W. P. TRENT
17AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
Series
More from Brander Matthews
The Complete Works of Jane Austen (Unabridged)Jane Austen88h 8m$2 · $0.00
Beyond Temptation & Risky PleasuresBrenda Jackson10h 53m$24 · $0.00
Shōgun, Part TwoJames Clavell29h 16m$40
Showdown in the Big EasyCharles Tillman, Michael Anderle, Martha Carr7h 37m$23
Searching For ThanksgivingS.E. Smith4h 24m$20
Naughty 4Brenda Hampton7h 30m$17
The Dance with Me TrilogyShelley Shepard Gray21h 44m$35
The DopemanJaQuavis Coleman5h 25m$20
Sherlock Holmes: The Ultimate CollectionArthur Conan Doyle59h 49m$5 · $0.00
My Favorite Husband, Vol. 1Hollywood 360, CBS Radio5h 40m$14
WhistlerAnn Patchett10h 45m$29 · $0.00
Grand Opening 2Carl Weber9h 16m$20
Sons of Valor II: Violence of ActionBrian Andrews, Jeffrey Wilson12h 34m$23
Malevolent MagicMildred Abbott7h 13m$17
Look TwiceEva Hudson9h 48m$20
The Complete Books of F. Scott Fitzgerald (all his 5 novels + all 4 short story collections published during his lifetime)F. Scott Fitzgerald87h 53m$2 · $0.00
Bikes, Toys, and Hot BoyzGenesis Woods, Shantaé13h 9m$23
The Natchez Burning TrilogyGreg Iles96h 18m$53 · $0.00
War LordBernard Cornwell13h 21m$33 · $0.00
Ghetto BastardK’wan7h 37m$20
You may also like
INSTINCTS OF THE HERD IN PEACE AND WARWilfred Trotter8h 50m$2 · $0.00
![Pebbles on the shore [by] Alpha of the plough](https://img.elevenlabs.io/lx8UFoXzA55jlkTqLUA0ceJViIC-ryNCJVe1sFctW-U/thumbnail/Z3M6Ly9lbGV2ZW4tcHVibGljLWNkbi9kYXRhYmFzZS9yZWFkcy8xZkxtSXJvQldnWXZYZ3Fwalk4Yy90aHVtYm5haWwud2VicA/a-g-gardiner-pebbles-on-the-shore-by-alpha-of-the-plough-audiobook-v-1781976117.webp)
Pebbles on the shore [by] Alpha of the ploughA. G. Gardiner7h 1m$2 · $0.00
Three GuineasVirginia Woolf9h 23m$2 · $0.00
Monday or Tuesday and Other Short StoriesVirginia Woolf1h 59m$2 · $0.00
Essays by Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson6h 43m$1 · $0.00
The Comet, and Other VersesIrving Sidney Dix7m$2 · $0.00
The Letters of a Post-ImpressionistVincent van Gogh3h 22m$1 · $0.00
PoemsEdna St. Vincent Millay2h 39m$2 · $0.00
The Greatest Works of Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson36h 5m$2 · $0.00
Between the Acts (Summarized Edition)Virginia Woolf2h 55m$2
The Colour of LifeAlice Meynell2h 47m$1 · $0.00
On the Beliefs and Convictions of Guinea-PigsLaura Spencer Portor53m$2 · $0.00
Essays by Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson14h 2m$25
A Century of English EssaysThomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Joseph Addison, William Caxton, Hilaire Belloc, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jonathan Swift, William Hazlitt, Edmund Gosse, Alice Meynell, Richard Jefferies, Augustine Birrell, William Makepeace Thackeray, Edward Thomas, Geoffrey Chaucer, Alexander Pope, Austin Dobson, Francis Bacon, W. B. Yeats, G. K. Chesterton, Richard Steele, Grace Rhys20h 33m$1 · $0.00
PoemsIris Tree2h 57m$2 · $0.00
The Complete Poetry of Emily DickinsonEmily Dickinson17h 36m$2 · $0.00
Rhymes of Old PlimouthHerbert Randall1h 37m$2 · $0.00
WaldenHenry David Thoreau12h 27m$2 · $0.00
Walden and On the Duty of Civil DisobedienceHenry David Thoreau13h 51m$25
Bashan and IThomas Mann5h 17m$2 · $0.00