James Fenimore Cooper’s Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief, first published in 1843, is an unusual satirical tale narrated by a handkerchief that recounts its own creation and...
Higginson begins with the unexpected warmth he discovered in Thomas Carlyle and then turns to manuscripts by Shelley and Keats, using intimate details to reveal the human beings be...
In the second half, Higginson recalls General Rufus Saxton, a woman connected with Thackeray, John Bartlett, Horace Elisha Scudder, Edward Atkinson, and James Elliot Cabot, showing...
After years in Europe, Eve Effingham and her family return to America, where their encounters with New York society reveal sharp differences between their memories of home and the ...
As gossip about the Effinghams and the controversy over the Point continue throughout Templeton, the novel increasingly exposes the vanity, prejudice, irresponsible journalism, and...
While crossing Lake Geneva, Baron Melchior de Willading, his daughter Adelheid, and their companions are caught in a dangerous storm and owe much of their survival to the courage o...
Although Adelheid remains devoted to Sigismund, she must confront the powerful social prejudices attached to his family while the festivities of the Abbaye des Vignerons expose the...
As the travelers cross the Great St. Bernard, snow, storms, and the dangers of the Alps force people of very different ranks to depend upon one another, while a murder discovered a...
In Newport, the young seaman James Wilder becomes fascinated by a mysterious vessel and gradually realizes that its remarkable commander is the notorious pirate known as the Red Ro...
After the Royal Caroline puts to sea, Wilder struggles to command the vessel through mounting danger until a violent storm and disaster destroy the ship, leaving Gertrude, Mrs. Wyl...
As the Dolphin continues her voyage, suspicion increasingly falls on Wilder, while the Red Rover uses daring deception and superb seamanship in confronting a Royal Navy vessel unti...
At Oyster Pond on Long Island, the avaricious Deacon Pratt obtains secret information from a dying sailor about a rich sealing ground and buried treasure in distant southern waters...
The two Sea Lions push far into the Southern Hemisphere, round Cape Horn, and enter the little-known Antarctic seas, where Roswell discovers remote Sealer's Land and begins a highl...
Trapped by the Antarctic winter, the sealers burn parts of their own vessels for fuel and depend increasingly on cooperation, while Roswell's conversations with Stimson and his exp...
Vice-Admiral Sir Gervaise Oakes and his lifelong friend Rear-Admiral Richard Bluewater arrive with their fleet off Wychecombe, where the failing Sir Wycherly Wychecombe's tangled i...
As the truth behind Sir Wycherly's inheritance becomes clearer, the Jacobite Sir Reginald and his associates attempt to exploit Bluewater's sympathy for the Stuart claim, leaving h...
After battling through a severe gale, Oakes brings the British fleet against the French, and Bluewater, despite his earlier political hesitation, ultimately chooses loyalty to his ...
