Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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Chapter 6: the Cambridge group

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The greater writers.

We have now to consider the development of the only purely literary group of a high class which America has as yet produced. The best summary of their work is perhaps that made by the late Horace Scudder:--

“It is too early to make a full survey of the immense importance to American letters of the work done by half a dozen great men in the middle of this century. The body of prose and verse created by them is constituting the solid foundation upon which other structures are to rise; the humanity which it holds is entering into the life of the country, and no material invention, or scientific discovery, or institutional prosperity, or accumulation of wealth will so powerfully affect the spiritual well-being of the nation for generations to come.” The highest intellectual centre of this group was to be found of course in Concord, which we shall presently have to consider; but its social centre was in Boston, or more properly