This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...he had sent occasional letters to the newspapers at home. And now, by a piece of luck, he fell in with Richard B. Kimball, a New York lawyer, who, as the author of several forgotten novels, probably understood how irritating it was to want to give the world literature, and to be asked instead for law. ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...he had sent occasional letters to the newspapers at home. And now, by a piece of luck, he fell in with Richard B. Kimball, a New York lawyer, who, as the author of several forgotten novels, probably understood how irritating it was to want to give the world literature, and to be asked instead for law. And Kimball--who " in 1849 bade me, in a letter, to go down on my knees and thank Rabelais for having preserved me from Longfellow "--" opened the door " of the " Knickerbocker Magazine," and of happiness, to the young Philadelphian oppressed with the emptiness of a legal life without clients; only two, at a profit of fifteen dollars, had Philadelphia found for him in the first six months. The " Knickerbocker," to the youth with literary aspirations, as to the literary man who had arrived, was what the " Atlantic " became in later years. " By all means, cultivate the ' Knickerbocker, '" Hawthorne's friend, Horace Bridge, wrote to him when Hawthorne was first trying to make a position in print, and he and Longfellow and Lowell and all distinguished and popular American authors, as well as many English, were among its contributors. For one's name to appear in its table of contents was an introduction. Before long, the Rye's work was accepted also for John Sartain's art magazine, published in Philadelphia. I doubt if many Philadelphians realize the number of experiments in periodical literature that have seen the light in Philadelphia. Longfellow, in his "Journal," refers to one that was to build up " a national literature worthy of the country of Niagara!" Hardly as much could be said of the pretensions of the " Drawing-Room Journal," another Philadelphia publication for which the Rye was allowed, as a favour, to write the musical and dramatic...
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