The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVII. Later National Literature, Part II.

XIII. Later Essayists.

§ 5. Prue and I.


But a more individual flavour comes to the front in Prue and I (1856), one of the most charming of American books, wherein the poor man endowed with the gift of imagination is shown to be a far richer and infinitely more sympathetic figure than the millionaire whose festivities he contemplates with the eye of a philosopher whom love has blessed. About this same period, Curtis began those papers which made the “Editor’s Easy Chair” in Harper’s Monthly a national, as well as a literary, institution; and he began, also, his public lectures, which, till the time of his death some forty years later, were so beneficially to affect the national life.   11