The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now (Library of America #192) [Hardcover]

Harold Holzer (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 26, 2008

Abraham Lincoln has achieved an unrivaled preeminence in American history, culture, and myth. Here, for the bicentennial of his birth, Lincoln and his enduring legacy are the focus of nearly 100 major authors and important historical figures from his time to the present. Edited by celebrated Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, this collection gathers fascinating writing from a variety of genres to illuminate the Lincoln we know and revere. It enables readers to rediscover Lincoln anew through the eyes of some of our greatest writers, including Winston Churchill, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, U. S. Grant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Victor Hugo, Henrik Ibsen, Karl Marx, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Gore Vidal, Booker T. Washington, H. G. Wells, Walt Whitman, Garry Wills, and many others. The Lincoln Anthology includes illustrations and a detailed chronology of Lincoln’s life.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This hefty Library of America anthology, edited by Lincoln scholar Holzer (co-chairman of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission), is a solid compilation of work on Abraham Lincoln from a diverse selection of writers in various genres, celebrating his extensive legacy and providing insight from a number of angles and time periods. From William Cullen Bryant's introduction of the little-known Illinois Republican at Cooper Union in Manhattan to Barack Obama's 2007 presidential candidacy announcement (made on Lincoln's birthday at Springfield's Old State Capitol, where Lincoln delivered his "House Divided" speech), Holzer follows the president's legacy through marquee names like Whitman, Hawthorne, Tolstoy, Marx, Churchill and Doctorow. Including a helpful index and a chronology of Lincoln's life, this voluminous, thorough collection will keep Lincoln fans reading well past the beloved president's upcoming bicentennial.
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From Booklist

For this collection of more than 100 selections from writings about Lincoln, anthologist Holzer largely avoids history and biography as such and concentrates on imaginative literature. Whether by poet, dramatist, or novelist, works in the genre tend to polarize into mythology or iconoclasm about the Lincoln image. Holzer’s introduction to each piece fits it into the historical fluctuations in Lincoln’s reputation, against the periodic exaltation of which critic Edmund Wilson, Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon, and novelist Gore Vidal all rebelled. Their excerpts contrast with the wealth of laudatory material that Holzer presents, which includes verse by Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, lyrics of songs, acts and scenes from plays and screenplays, and passages from historical fiction. Including memorial addresses and historical essays, Holzer’s volume faithfully represents the range of feelings and meanings writers from 1860 to the present have drawn from the Lincoln story. This title is offered both separately and in a three-volume boxed set, The Lincoln Bicentennial Collection (9781598530360, $99.95), which includes the two-volume Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings (1989), edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 964 pages
• Publisher: Library of America; 1st edition (December 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159853033X
• ISBN-13: 978-1598530339
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #154,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #78 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( L ) > Lincoln, Abraham

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Library of America's second Lincoln book blunder, September 15, 2009

By 

pmdjn (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now (Library of America #192) (Hardcover)

Oh, this book was terrible! No joke, just atrocious! It was killing me to go through it.
Almost fifty years since the last worthy anthology of writings on Lincoln (LINCOLN AND THE CIVIL WAR, ed. by Courtlandt Canby, 1960), I was really looking forward to this work, but it falls short of even minimal expectations.
Whereas Canby and Paul Angle before him (THE LINCOLN READER, 1947) produced outstanding anthologies by skillfully arranging and editing contemporary and modern book passages outlining and analyzing Lincoln's life and Presidency, this book is mostly poems, odes, speeches and other uninformative and unsubstantial verse simply printed in order of their publication. What do such writings tell us about Lincoln's life or the great decisions that constitute his legacy, as the book's subtitle states? How could an essay like Tom Taylor's "Lincoln Foully Assassinated" which doesn't even mention John Wilkes Booth and his actual deed be included? Unbelievable! Or John Greenleaf Whittier's "The Emancipation Group" with nothing about the evolution of the Emancipation Proclamation and its advocates?! Just more lyrics and fluff. Where are the writings of late scholars like James Ford Rhodes, Alan Nevins or James G. Randall? Or the great modern historians like David Donald, Doris Kearns Goodwin, or James McPherson?
It wasn't enough for the Library of America to replace the late dean of Lincoln scholars Don Fehrenbacher's introduction to its LINCOLN SPEECHES AND WRITINGS with Gore Vidal, now they must insult serious students again with another bow to verse over scholarship. There is SOME good, solid history by Lincoln secretaries Nicolay & Hay, Winston Churchill, and Shelby Foote, and the life chronology at the end is better than most. But these hardly justify $40 for over 800 pages of fluff. By far, this book is more suited to the literature section, not biography or history.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "O captain, my captain....", April 13, 2009

By 

John Sollami (Stamford, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now (Library of America #192) (Hardcover)

I was made aware of this title through the recent Lincoln PBS special with Sam Waterson and Harold Holzer. The readings on the show made me want to hear them again, and they are all here in this very good collection. Particularly interesting is the poem by Melville, who met Lincoln and asked for an ambassadorship to Florence, Italy, which he didn't get. Also of interest is the Nathanael Hawthorne description upon first meeting Lincoln. And of course, the poems of Walt Whitman are forever poignant. Lincoln's appeal to poets, writers, and the world was such because he himself was something of a poet and loved Shakespeare and all literature.
This is a fine collection. It should be read in a historical context, divorced from the political struggles we endure today.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Selections of writings about Lincoln since 1860., July 14, 2010

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now (Library of America #192) (Hardcover)

Lincoln is one of the most written about people in American or even world history. Authors love to write about him and publishers are more willing to print books about him because they tend to sell. This interesting book from the wonderful Library of America (I hope you always support them) is edited by Harold Holzer and brings together a huge number of selections about Lincoln. The writings run from 1860 when he began to become a national figure to E.L. Doctrow in 2005 with an epilogue that includes some quotes from Barack Obama at Springfield in 2005. The editor weaves them together in way that ties them to Lincoln at Gettysburg and Barack's theme of Hope.

This epilogue is emblematic of the one problem I have with this otherwise wonderful book. The author is too willing and obviously sympathetic to hand Lincoln over to the Left as a symbol and property to use in their agenda to transform America without regard to its founding, traditions, and our still extant (but too often ignored) Constitution.

That quibble aside, the writings are wide ranging and diverse in purpose and in sympathies towards Lincoln. Some of the authors worship him while others rage at him. Some stick to history while others feel free to use Lincoln divorced from history and bring in symbols and events that never happened in order to make their artistic and political points. The selections are written not only by authors of fictional or historical works. You will also find journalism, poems, excerpts from plays, writings by politicians and statesmen, journalists, and even memoirs from people who knew him. You also get a chronology of Lincoln's life at the back of the book.

Each selection has an introductory paragraph or two that help you understand the context of the selection. And if you want to read more of the excerpt (and most are excerpts), you can easily find most of the selections online, at a good library, or for sale on Amazon. The book also includes eight illustrations (not portraits) that enrich our understanding of some of the writings.

While I became a bit weary of the Liberal slant of the selections, I do value this book a great deal and am glad I read it and have it for future reference. The readings broadened by view of how Lincoln has been viewed and is used not only as an historical figure, but also as a symbol that has been fashioned in many ways for many purposes over the past century and a half.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Saline, MI