Maryland Wits and Baltimore Bards: A Literary History with Notes on Washington Writers

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JHU Press, Jan 29, 1998 - Biography & Autobiography - 343 pages

A lively account of Maryland's long-overlooked but substantial contribution to American letters.

In this first comprehensive literary history of Baltimore and Maryland (with notes on Washington writers), Frank R. Shivers, Jr., explores the region's long-overlooked but substantial contribution to American letters. In picture and story, Shivers's lively account ranges from the colonial satire of Ebenezer Cook, to the National Anthem of Francis Scott Key, to the acclaimed works of Poe, Mencken, and Fitzgerald. Here are surprising stories of Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Dashiel Hammett, Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, and other writers influenced by Chesapeake culture—an influence still fresh in the work of such contemporary writers as John Barth, Anne Tyler, and Russell Baker. "Nothing," wrote Gertrude Stein, "really can stop anyone living and feeling as they do in Baltimore." As entertaining as it is informative, Maryland Wits and Baltimore Bards shows us why.

From inside the book

Contents

List of Illustrations
12
Annapolis Wits and Baltimore Bards
33
Rising Glories of City and Nation
51
Irrecoverably a Poet
71
Dawn of a Fine Literary Day?
99
From Drum Taps to Confederate Diaspora
121
No Peace and Claret
141
The Perfect Lady and a Sort of Devil
161
Shallow Kittenish Fellows and Other
187
Square Houses Circle Lives
211
Copyright

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