In the best sense of the word Holmes was a provincial New Englander. He was proud of the traditions of his district, devoted to its welfare, certain of its capacity for improvement, but sure of its contribution to the integrity of American character. Although he did not share the deeper enthusiasms of Emerson or even fully understand them, he had much more of the milk of human kindness in him. His “message” and his manner of delivering it were popular with the reading public. He was not a leader, but he kept up to the times, and he explained the drift of them to many who might not otherwise have perceived what was going on in the world or in themselves. In the tributes which came from every quarter after his death his geniality was the highest common factor—a wholesome and homely trait which will always be sure of affectionate regard in American literature.
BOOK LIST
Individual Author
Oliver Wendell Holmes. Riverside Edition. 13 vols. Prose, Vols. I–X; Poetry, XI–XIII. 1891. Standard Library Edition, 1892; Autocrat Edition, 1904; both 15 vols. (uniform with Riverside Edition, with added life by J. T. Morse as Vols. XIV and XV). The best single volume of poems is the Cambridge Edition, 1895. His work appeared in book form originally as follows: Poems, 1836; Boylston Prize Dissertations, 1838; Homeopathy, and its Kindred Delusions, 1842; Urania, 1846; Poems, 1849; Astræa, 1850; The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858; The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, 1860; Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science, 1861; Elsie Venner, 1861; Songs in Many Keys, 1862; Soundings from the Atlantic, 1864; Humorous Poems, 1865; The Guardian Angel, 1867; The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, 1872; Songs of Many Seasons, 1875; John Lothrop Motley, 1879; The Iron Gate, 1880; Medical Essays, 1883; Pages from an Old Volume of Life, 1883; Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1885; A Mortal Antipathy, 1885; Our Hundred Days in Europe, 1887; Before the Curfew, and Other Poems, 1888; Over the Teacups, 1891.
Bibliography
A volume compiled by George B. Ives. 1907. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 540–543.
Biography and Criticism
The standard life is by John T. Morse. 1896. 2 vols.
Collins, Churton. The Poetry and Poets of America.
Cooke, G. W. Dr. Holmes at Fourscore. New England Magazine, October, 1889.