Professor Miller has compiled an anthology of the writings of the New England Transcendentalists that is at once surprisingly interesting and, thanks to his illuminating introduction to each selection, a brilliant dramatization of a major era in our intellectual history.

Perry Miller has skillfully edited the articles, essays, poems, and addresses of the New England transcendentalists, who roused such a vital tempest in the Boston teacup in the romantic 1830s. In compiling this anthology Mr. Miller has arranged the material to give a clear view of the early beginnings of the transcendentalist group, their flowering, and their disintegration.

From his extremely skillful editing of the documents the Transcendentalist controversy emerges as one of the major intellectual battles of our history. He briefs us on its progress in a masterly fashion, discriminating the moves so that we watch it almost with the excitement of watching a play.

The story of transcendentalism in terms of selections from the writings of its chief proponents, and with representative comments by its enemies, puts a solid foundation under a significant episode… Professor Miller has skillfully retraced the lines of battle in what was one of the most momentous conflicts of mind and spirit that this country has known, a conflict unparalleled until the intellectual crisis of the 1920s. He has supplied an indispensable unit for the study of the intellectual, social, and literary history of the United States… The anthology he has compiled is a monument to the best sort of scholarship. It places the past in true perspective and makes it live again.