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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

Forfatter af The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (August 29, 1809 - October 7, 1894) was an American physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author based in Boston. A member of the Fireside Poets, his peers acclaimed him as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" vis mere series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He was also an important medical reformer. Holmes was a professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard College for 35 years. His literary fame came relatively early when in 1830 he published a few lines of verse in a Boston newspaper in which he objected to the dismantling of the frigate Constitution, which had served its nation victoriously in the Tripolitan War and the War of 1812. The poem, "Old Ironside," was a great success, both for Holmes as a poet and in saving the frigate. However, his medical studies left Holmes little leisure for literature for the next 25 years. That changed, however, with the publication of an animated series of essays in the newly founded Atlantic Monthly in 1857 and 1858, and afterwards published in book form as The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). Not only did these essays help secure the magazine's success, but also brought Holmes widespread popularity. Holmes as an essayist has been compared with all of the great writers in that genre, from Michel de Montaigne to Charles Lamb, but his compositions are closer to conversational than to formal prose. Later volumes---The Professor at the Breakfast-Table (1860), The Poet at the Breakfast-Table (1872), and Over the Teacups (1891)---extend the autocrat's delightfully egotistical talks, mainly of Boston and New England, in which Holmes was, by turns, brilliantly witty and extremely serious. During these same years, he also wrote three so-called medicated novels: Elsie Venner (1861), The Guardian Angel (1867), and A Mortal Antipathy (1885). Though undistinguished as literary documents, they are important early studies of that "mysterious borderland which lies between physiology and psychology," and they demonstrate that Holmes was advanced in his conception of the causes and progress of neuroses and mental disease. Holmes died quietly after falling asleep in the afternoon of Sunday, October 7, 1894. As his son, the U. S. Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote, "His death was as peaceful as one could wish for those one loves. He simply ceased to breathe." Holmes's memorial service was held at King's Chapel and overseen by Edward Everett Hale. Holmes was buried alongside his wife in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Bowker Author Biography) vis mindre
Image credit: Holmes c. 1879 By Armstrong & Co. (Boston, Mass.), - https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003654010/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33849886

Værker af Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858) 787 eksemplarer
Poems (1877) 190 eksemplarer
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1860) 106 eksemplarer
The Poet at the Breakfast-Table (1872) 98 eksemplarer
Elsie Venner A Romance of Destiny (1883) 97 eksemplarer
Over the Teacups (1891) 68 eksemplarer
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1884) 42 eksemplarer
The Guardian Angel (1891) 29 eksemplarer
Medical Essays (1882) 28 eksemplarer
A Mortal Antipathy (1892) 20 eksemplarer
John Lothrop Motley. A memoir (2007) 14 eksemplarer
The Last Leaf 8 eksemplarer
Dorothy Q (1893) 8 eksemplarer
Songs in many keys (2004) 6 eksemplarer
Soundings from the Atlantic (1864) 5 eksemplarer
The Autocrat's Miscellanies (2012) 4 eksemplarer
Opals from Holmes 4 eksemplarer
The School-Boy (1879) — Forfatter — 3 eksemplarer
The Chambered Nautilus (1934) 3 eksemplarer
Pearls From Holmes 2 eksemplarer
The Poems of Oliver W. Holmes (1887) 2 eksemplarer
Songs of many seasons 2 eksemplarer
Before the curfew 2 eksemplarer
Sounding From the Atlantic (2019) 1 eksemplar
Holmes's Works 1 eksemplar
Ivy From Holmes (1910) 1 eksemplar
Wit & Humour: Poems (1867) 1 eksemplar
On lending a punch-bowl (2010) 1 eksemplar
Holmwa Poems (1900) 1 eksemplar
Holmes' Early Poems 1 eksemplar
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1978) 1 eksemplar

Associated Works

One Hundred and One Famous Poems (1916) — Bidragyder, nogle udgaver1,947 eksemplarer
English Poetry, Volume III: From Tennyson to Whitman (1909) — Bidragyder — 618 eksemplarer
The Illustrated Treasury of Children's Literature, Volumes 1-2 (1955) — Bidragyder — 459 eksemplarer
New England Legends and Folk Lore (1884) — Bidragyder — 178 eksemplarer
American Religious Poems: An Anthology (2006) — Bidragyder — 162 eksemplarer
Best Remembered Poems (1992) — Bidragyder — 159 eksemplarer
The Standard Book of British and American Verse (1932) — Bidragyder — 116 eksemplarer
Poets of the Civil War (2005) — Bidragyder — 94 eksemplarer
Witches, Witches, Witches (1958) — Bidragyder — 32 eksemplarer
American Literature: The Makers and the Making (In Two Volumes) (1973) — Bidragyder, nogle udgaver25 eksemplarer
100 Story Poems (1951) — Bidragyder — 20 eksemplarer
Poems of Magic and Spells (1960) — Bidragyder — 14 eksemplarer
English Narrative Poems (1909) — Bidragyder — 12 eksemplarer
American Poems 1779-1900 (1922) — Bidragyder — 11 eksemplarer
Tales of Witches, Ghosts and Goblins — Bidragyder — 2 eksemplarer
The Best of American Poetry [Audio] (1997) — Bidragyder — 1 eksemplar

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In a year's worth of columns for the nascent Atlantic Monthly, an orator holds forth on shoes, ships, and sealing wax over a series of boarding-house breakfasts. His audience, among the clatter of silverware and tea cups, is alternately impressed and skeptical at his assertions.
 
Markeret
proustbot | 9 andre anmeldelser | Jun 19, 2023 |
couldn't finish, fairly dry and dated
 
Markeret
ritaer | 9 andre anmeldelser | Jul 24, 2021 |
I was enormously disappointed in this book. If the narrator is indeed an autocrat, I'm all for revolution and bringing up the guillotine. Turgid and leaden in its delivery, not particularly funny, nor particularly wise. In short, the autocrat is a windy bore. Not recommended.
½
 
Markeret
EricCostello | 9 andre anmeldelser | Jul 21, 2019 |
This little book took me some time to read. At first, I thought I might write down some of the quotes from it, but soon I realised that each page had a memorable quote and I decided to leave the possibility that I will remember this book should any of the various quotes be needed again in the future. I daresay at this I shall fail but if I put it to memory that there are many important quotes in this work, I may well recover some of its hidden gems. I found Oliver Wendell Holmes to read like that other three-named American, Ralph Waldo Emerson, although less of a "Churchman", rather than a divinity address he had a divinity student at the boarding house table. This book was originally written as a series of articles for The Atlantic Monthly first written in 1857 with the first serial of this book appearing in its first edition. The work lends itself to being read in a stop-start fashion, as if it were meant to be serialised, and there is so much packed into so few sentences that it takes some time to absorb the sheer depth of wit, meaning, humour, learnedness, and intellect on display. The interspersed poetry had me wonder at times why poetry is so "on the nose" these days (Random House does not accept manuscripts of poetry, and recently, a quote on the movie The Big Short: "The truth is like poetry. And everyone fucking hates poetry"). I think we miss something as a result. But not so in Holmes' time. Nevertheless, this took a long time to digest, even though it is not a difficult read.… (mere)
 
Markeret
madepercy | 9 andre anmeldelser | Nov 7, 2017 |

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Værker
123
Also by
22
Medlemmer
1,857
Popularitet
#13,859
Vurdering
3.8
Anmeldelser
20
ISBN
278
Sprog
2

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