Essays: English and American. rn The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
James Russell LowellIntroductory Note
J
On the retirement of Longfellow from the chair of belles-lettres at Harvard in 1854, Lowell was elected to succeed him, and by way of preparation spent the next two years in Europe studying modern languages and literatures. In 1857 he became the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and after 1864 he collaborated with Charles Eliot Norton in the editorship of the North American Review. Throughout the period of the war Lowell wrote much both in prose and verse on behalf of the Union; his work on the North American was largely literary criticism.
In 1877 Lowell went to Spain as American Minister, and in 1880 to London, where for five years he represented the United States with great distinction, and did much to improve the relations of the two countries. Six years after his return, on August 12, 1891, he died in Elmwood, the house in Cambridge where he was born.
Lowell’s literary gifts were so various that it is difficult to say on which of them his final reputation will rest. But it is certain that he will long be esteemed for the grace, vivacity, and eloquence of the prose in which he placed before the world his views on such great American principles and personalities as are dealt with in the following essay on “Abraham Lincoln”.