The American Literary Blog

Image Source Though he is most famous for his role as a Justice of the Supreme Court, an appointment which was made December 15, 1882,...

Samuel Gridley Howe was an active abolitionist (he was a member of the Secret Six which financed John Brown 's raid on Harper's F...

A friend recommended to Oliver Wendell Holmes that he read the short story " The Bell of Saint Basil's ." Moved by the story,...

The issue of the Boston Evening Transcript for March 4, 1885, reported a "genuine surprise" for some of Boston's literary eli...

In 1889, the Connecticut-born writer Louise Chandler Moulton published her book of poems In the Garden of Dreams (she gave a copy as a Chri...

John Greenleaf Whittier was born in the family homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts on December 17, 1807. As was traditional in the 19th ...

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was interested in many things. In addition to being a poet , novelist , and essayist, he was a physician, a profe...

*Today's guest blog is by novelist Matthew Pearl , whose historical fiction mysteries include The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow . His...

Mount Auburn Cemetery , a National Historic Landmark, was consecrated on September 24, 1831. In his consecration address, Justice Joseph S...

When Thomas Melvill died on September 16, 1832, he was 86 years old and one of the last remnants of the generation that fought for American...

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 29, 1809, Oliver Wendell Holmes became a medical doctor and reformer, a poet, a novelist , and...

August 5, 1850 may have been the most exciting day in American literary history. A band of now-recognized literary giants (and a couple l...

A true Renaissance man, Oliver Wendell Holmes had a long, storied life. He was a poet , a scholar/academic, a doctor,  medical reformer, co...

Though primarily remembered for one novel, one which was the highest-selling of the century, Harriet Beecher Stowe (pictured at left, 1886)...

Oliver Wendell Holmes was the go-to guy in the Boston area (and beyond) whenever an occasional poem was needed. He wrote poems specific t...

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes once confessed that he was a bit provincial. Indeed, much of his writing centers on Boston, which he called the ...

On April 8, 1847, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow experimented with drugs — so to speak. That day, he visited his dentist, Dr. Nathan C...

James Freeman Clarke was born 200 years ago today on April 4, 1810. After graduating from Harvard Divinity School, he preached his first se...

The National Education Association met in Boston on February 23, 1893. Often called upon for special functions in his native city, Dr. Oliv...

Though he has since faded into relative obscurity, James Russell Lowell was a well-known poet, critic, editor, scholar, abolitionist, and d...