Studies in Classic American Literature

2019 Reprint of 1923 Edition. Studies in Classic American Literature is Lawrence’s most famed work of literary criticism. In it he discusses the significance of the work of Benjamin Franklin, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Herman Melville and Walt Whitman. The critic Harold Bloom cited Studies in Classic American Literature in his The Western Canon (1994) as one of the books that have been important and influential in Western culture. Lawrence's work is generally credited with contributing to the restoration of Herman Melville as a seminal figure in American literature. In these highly individual, penetrating essays he has exposed 'the American whole soul' within some of that continent's major works of literature.