Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1900. Li... (Total: 7 Items)

Description

Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Cambridge: Printed at The Riverside Press, 1900. Large-Paper Edition. Limited to 200 numbered copies. With an Autograph Manuscript Letter, dated Sept. 2, 1906, bound into Volume I. Seven octavo volumes. Engraved frontispieces on India paper mounted. Descriptive tissue guards. Publisher's (stamp-signed on front free endpaper: Bound at the Riverside Press) three-quarter dark blue Levant morocco, ruled in gilt, over pale blue marbled boards. Spines decoratively paneled and lettered in gilt in compartments, top edge gilt, others uncut, pale blue marbled endpapers.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) "graduated from Harvard (1841) and Harvard Divinity School, and became a Unitarian minister. During the Civil War, he was colonel of the first regiment of black soldiers (black regiments were require to be commanded by white officers), and his war experiences are described in Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870). After being wounded, he retired to Newport, later returning to Cambridge to devote himself to writing, teaching, and social reform, being particularly interested in equal rights for blacks and in the woman suffrage movement. His books include Malbone (1869), a novel; sketches, including Oldport Days (1873) and Old Cambridge (1899); the lives of Whittier (1902) and Longfellow (1902) for the Men of Letters series; biographies of Margaret Fuller (1884) and of his ancestor, Francis Higginson (1891); and an autobiographical account, Cheerful Yesterdays (1898), valuable for its information about his contemporaries. Higginson was the first to encourage Emily Dickinson, although he tended to 'correct' her poems. He edited two volumes of her verse with Mabel L. Todd" (The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature).