Letters from America (Hesperus Modern Voices) - Softcover

Brooke, Rupert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1843914336 ISBN 13: 9781843914334

Publisher: Hesperus Press, 2007

Synopsis

In May 1913, Rupert Brooke embarked on a year-long expedition of North America, visiting the United States, Canada, and finally the South Seas. He sent his impressions home in a series of letters, written for publication in the Westminster Gazette, describing all his various experiences and reflections: the beauty of arriving by boat at night in New York; the novelties of a baseball game; the awesome grandeur of Niagara Falls and the Canadian wilderness; and "the full deliciousness of traveling in an American train by night through new scenery." He is blunt in his judgments on society, business, and cities; playful in his accounts of Anglo-American relations; and finally humbled by the vastness of the landscape in which he finds himself. Henry James's foreword to the collection on its publication in 1916 is included here as an afterword.

About this title

About the Author

Acclaimed British poet Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) is perhaps best remembered for his war poetry, in particular his five War Sonnets.

From Publishers Weekly

In these short letters written mostly for the Westminster Gazette, the 26-year-old British poet jotted down his impressions of a year-long trip to the United States, Canada and the South Pacific. With an adulatory preface by Henry James, they were issued in book form in London in 1916, after Brooke's death, and have never before been published hereand with reason. The pieces consist mainly of overwritten descriptions of scenery and superficial generalities about New York and Boston, Canada's larger cities, Niagara Falls, the Canadian Prairies and Rockies, which any talented young writer might have put down to impress faraway friends. One letter, entitled "Some Niggers," praises the German colonizers of Samoa. Certainly not Brooke's finest writing.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hesperus Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1843914336
• ISBN 13: 9781843914334
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 124