William Cullen Bryant

THE BOSTON BRAHMINS 
The most popular poet in America at this time was a rather traditional writer – 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1807-1882). Although his style was conservative, with 
strict meter and rhymes, his themes were deliberately American, and he was intent upon 
giving American history the dignity of classical mythology. Longfellow published over 
20 books. In 1855 there appeared “
The Song of Hiawatha
”, a long epic poem about a 
young warrior of an American Indian tribe. In his poem, the author sang the harmony of 
nature and the harmony in the relationship of man and nature. For the first time in 
American literature, Indian themes gained recognition as sources of imagination, power, 
and originality. 
 
Longfellow was one of a popular group called the “Fireside Poets” because they 
often depicted the lives of simple New Englanders in gentle, nostalgic verse. Although 
they came from old New England families – a sort of American “aristocracy”, they 
named themselves “
The Boston Brahmins
” – Longfellow and his circle were dedicated 
to America’s democratic ideals. Besides Longfellow, leading Brahmin authors included 
George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John 
Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell
and some famous historians. In 1857, the club 
started its own magazine, the “
Atlantic Monthly
”, through which Boston’s literary 
establishment tried to influence the intellectual life and tastes of the new American 
republic. 
 
INDIVIDUALS 
While these New England intellectuals presented perspectives of literature and 
life other writers were concentrating upon human imagination and emotion rather than 
the intellect. A young Virginian, 
Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1849), was publishing poems 
of musical language and extravagant imagery, which made him a worthy rival of the 
European Romantic poets. Poe based his poetic works (
“The Raven”, “Annabel Lee”, 
“To Helen”, Ulalume”, “For Annie”,
etc.) on the theory that the best subject for poetry 

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is the death of a beautiful woman, who symbolizes an ideal spiritual value. Brilliant but 
unstable, Poe earned his living as a journalist, often writing devastating reviews of other 
writers’ work. In 1835, he also began writing bold, original short stories, such as 
“The 
Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”. 
These suspenseful, 
sometimes terrifying tales plunged deep into human psychology and explored the 
realms of science fiction and the mystery story long before such genres were 
recognized. With his 
“Murders in the Rue Morgue”, The Purloined Letter”, “The 
Mystery of Marie Roget”
, Poe also became the father of detective fiction. As to his 
literary criticism, Poe believed that the ideal critic should be objective, analytical, and, 
if necessary, unhesitatingly negative. He insisted that criticism should deal with 
qualities of beauty, not history, biography, or philosophy. 
Meanwhile, in 1837, a young writer in New England named