The Library of America's mission is to devise ways of preserving the most significant U.S. writing, which undoubtedly has led to this worthy project. This theme-driven anthology features American literature of the sea from it beginnings, starting with William Strachey's
A True Reportory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, concluding with a selection from John McPhee's
Looking for a Ship , and in-between teaching the reader a thing or two with such pieces as Olaudah Equiano's narrative about life on a slave ship, Longfellow's
The Wreck of the Hesperus , Peter Matthiessen's
Under Montauk Light, and Rachel Carson's
The Marginal World . It's an imaginatively edited anthology that gives readers a strong sense of American sea writing.
Bonnie SmothersCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Library Journal
The publisher reached way back into the archives of American literature for this collection, beginning with William Strachey's 1609 account of being blown off course on the way to the Jamestown, VA, settlement and shipwrecked in Bermuda. This amalgam of fiction and nonfiction includes short stories and excerpts from novels, dramas, diaries, and journals from such authors as Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Hemingway, Rachel Carson, and Peter Matthiessen, among others. In a word: outstanding.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.