Overview

A rediscovery of the bold cosmopolitan activism and professional literary adventures of six antebellum writers By looking beyond the page and into the extraordinary lives of Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Grace Greenwood, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Frederick Douglass, this book uncovers their startling contributions to transatlantic culture and makes the argument that literature is dependent upon other modes of professional creativity in order to thrive. Leslie Elizabeth Eckel shows how these six figures shaped their careers in the fields of education, journalism, public lecturing and editing in productive relation to their development as imaginative writers. To see Walt Whitman co-producing foreign editions of his work with British poets while exuberantly breaking free from verse strictures on the page, or to witness Margaret Fuller reporting from the battle ground in revolutionary Rome as well as writing her country's first feminist treatise is to comprehend more deeply the ways in which these writers acted in the transatlantic sphere. By practicing Atlantic citizenship, they were able to achieve critical distance from the United States and, paradoxically, to catalyse its ongoing growth.

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9780748669370

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Reviews

This book represent a fine contribution to transatlantic scholarship...Eckel's way of recontextualizing authors according to their vocational routes offers illuminating new readings of canonical American writers. Paul Giles, Journal of American Studies, 48/1 Each chapter of Atlantic Citizens is deeply grounded in criticism, history, biography and close textual analysis. Leslie Eckel's prose is largely jargon free and sparkles with shrewd insights and delightful wit. Her book is a bold declaration that transatlantic literary study is as vital as ever. Emerson Society Papers, Vol 25, Number 1

"This book represent a fine contribution to transatlantic scholarship...Eckel's way of recontextualizing authors according to their ""vocational routes"" offers illuminating new readings of canonical American writers. Paul Giles, Journal of American Studies, 48/1 Each chapter of Atlantic Citizens is deeply grounded in criticism, history, biography and close textual analysis. Leslie Eckel's prose is largely jargon free and sparkles with shrewd insights and delightful wit. Her book is a bold declaration that transatlantic literary study is as vital as ever. Emerson Society Papers, Vol 25, Number 1"

This book represent a fine contribution to transatlantic scholarship...Eckel's way of recontextualizing authors according to their vocational routes offers illuminating new readings of canonical American writers. Paul Giles, Journal of American Studies, 48/1 Each chapter of Atlantic Citizens is deeply grounded in criticism, history, biography and close textual analysis. Leslie Eckel's prose is largely jargon free and sparkles with shrewd insights and delightful wit. Her book is a bold declaration that transatlantic literary study is as vital as ever. Emerson Society Papers, Vol 25, Number 1

This book represent a fine contribution to transatlantic scholarship...Eckel's way of recontextualizing authors according to their vocational routes offers illuminating new readings of canonical American writers. Paul Giles, Journal of American Studies, 48/1Each chapter of Atlantic Citizens is deeply grounded in criticism, history, biography and close textual analysis. Leslie Eckel's prose is largely jargon free and sparkles with shrewd insights and delightful wit. Her book is a bold declaration that transatlantic literary study is as vital as ever. Emerson Society Papers, Vol 25, Number 1

This book represent a fine contribution to transatlantic scholarship...Eckel's way of recontextualizing authors according to their vocational routes offers illuminating new readings of canonical American writers. Paul Giles, Journal of American Studies, 48/1 Each chapter of Atlantic Citizens is deeply grounded in criticism, history, biography and close textual analysis. Leslie Eckel's prose is largely jargon free and sparkles with shrewd insights and delightful wit. Her book is a bold declaration that transatlantic literary study is as vital as ever. Emerson Society Papers, Vol 25, Number 1

Author Information

Leslie Elizabeth Eckel is Associate Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston. She is the author of Atlantic Citizens: Nineteenth-Century American Writers at Work in the World (2013). Her essays have appeared in books and journals such as Atlantic Studies, Transatlantica, Common-place, Arizona Quarterly, and ESQ. Her current book project, “Dwelling in Possibility: Atlantic Utopias and Countercultures,” explores the linguistic networks of utopian writing in the long nineteenth century.

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