He had a romantic soul, a keen and critical eye sometimes at war with that soul, a deep reserve but an open hand, a savagery of opinion that was often turned on himself (who least deserved it), and a loving marriage that began scandalously and ended as if blessed by God.
Read MoreWilkie Collins, perhaps because he was less of a public persona, less of an icon than Dickens, tested the limits of tolerance more aggressively. You can think of him writing "novels of sensation," as they were called, but you must remember that he was creating the definition of sensation.
Read MoreI liked the Irving of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, and the German student (one of the great horror stories, by the way), and I had read his Tour of the Prairies (1832) with appreciation for his observational skills. I knew about his four-volume life of George Washington, but I did not know what to expect of his attempt at history and biography. He lived in a great age of American historians -- George Bancroft, William Hickling Prescott, John Motley, Francis Parkman (all now condescended to as "romantic" historians) -- but Irving was a storyteller, a fabulist, a satirist, not a man of facts and dates. I was pleasantly surprised.
Read MoreWhistlestop Bookshop is an independent bookseller in Carlisle PA. Founded in 1985, Whistlestop sells new and secondhand books in all categories and a wide variety of sidelines, from magazines to puzzles, literary t-shirts to cds and dvds, from totes to local honey. Our mission is to get the right books in the right hands at the right time.
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