Other editions of book John Brown's Body:A Poem - Stephen Vincent Benet - Easton Press - Douglas Southall Freeman - John Steuart Curry Illustrations

One of the most widely read poems of our time, John Brown's Body is Stephen Vincent Benét's masterful retelling of the Civil War. A book of great energy and sweep, it swings into view the entire course of that terrible and decisive war, lighting up the lives of soldiers, leaders, and civilians, North and South, amidst the conflict. Generations of readers have found the book a compelling and moving experience. "Magnificently readable."―New Statesman. "It is not one of your tours de forces of intellect and technique, to be admired and then tucked away on the library shelf. It is a library of storytelling itself, a poem extraordinarily rich in action as well as actors, vivid, varied, and so expressive of many men and moods that prose could never have carried its electric burden."―Saturday Review. "A remarkable piece of imaginative reporting; and one in which not only the forces which make history are embodied in the speech and action of very diverse men and women but the ideas also of which these forces were the driving power."―London Times Literary Supplement.

One of the most widely read poems of our time, John Brown s Body is Stephen Vincent Benét s masterful retelling of the Civil War. A book of great energy and sweep, it swings into view the entire course of that terrible and decisive war, lighting up the lives of soldiers, leaders, and civilians, North and South, amidst the conflict. Generations of readers have found the book a compelling and moving experience. "Magnificently readable." New Statesman. "It is not one of your tours de forces of intellect and technique, to be admired and then tucked away on the library shelf. It is a library of storytelling itself, a poem extraordinarily rich in action as well as actors, vivid, varied, and so expressive of many men and moods that prose could never have carried its electric burden." Saturday Review. "A remarkable piece of imaginative reporting; and one in which not only the forces which make history are embodied in the speech and action of very diverse men and women but the ideas also of which these forces were the driving power." London Times Literary Supplement.

Excerpt from John Brown's BodyBut only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land, As mountainous-deep, as flowered with blue rivers, Thirsty with deserts, buried under snows, As native as the shape of Navajo quivers, And native, too, as the sea-voyaged rose.Swift runner, never captured or subdued, Seven-branched elk beside the mountain stream, That half a hundred hunters have pursued But never matched their bullets with the dream, Where the great huntsmen failed, I set my sorry And mortal snare for your immortal quarry.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from John Brown's Body But only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land, As mountainous-deep, as flowered with blue rivers, Thirsty with deserts, buried under snows, As native as the shape of Navajo quivers, And native, too, as the sea-voyaged rose. Swift runner, never captured or subdued, Seven-branched elk beside the mountain stream, That half a hundred hunters have pursued But never matched their bullets with the dream, Where the great huntsmen failed, I set my sorry And mortal snare for your immortal quarry. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from John Brown's BodyBut only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land, As mountainous-deep, as flowered with blue rivers, Thirsty with deserts, buried under snows, As native as the shape of Navajo quivers, And native, too, as the sea-voyaged rose.Swift runner, never captured or subdued, Seven-branched elk beside the mountain stream, That half a hundred hunters have pursued But never matched their bullets with the dream, Where the great huntsmen failed, I set my sorry And mortal snare for your immortal quarry.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

"I have a swell idea for a long poem," wrote Stephen Vincent Benét to his wife in 1925. "The only trouble is, it would take about seven years to write and I'd have to read an entire library first." Thus began the long journey into 100,000 words—almost 15,000 lines—that was to culminate in the publication in 1928 of John Brown's Body. Benét knew it would be a long, arduous, often discouraging task, and yet it was one in which he strongly believed and just as strongly wanted to complete. "The book had to be written," wrote his brother William Rose Benét. "It sprang from inner necessity." This stirring poem is a remarkably vivid portrait of our heritage. It has been widely published, has received a Pulitzer Prize, has been the basis for a powerful stage performance that toured 60 cities across the country. Such distinction carries The Franklin Library limited edition dress and binding most comfortably. Come with us now to the American Civil War, to the adventure, drama and lyrical beauty of John Brown's Body. The Editors 1976 Franklin Mint Corporation Printed in the United States of America

First Book-of-the-Month Club printing. Originally published in 1928, this extended poem, set during the American Civil War, garnered Benét the Pulitzer Prize in 1929. Includes an introduction by Archibald MacLeish and eleven wood engravings by Barry Moser, which were printed by the Hampshire Typothetae under the eye of the artist. Endpapers are reproductions of manuscript pages from Book Eight of John Brown's Body from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Printed in Janson type with display type and initials set by hand in Great Primer Antique. Jacket spine faded, slip case faded around open edge. xv, iii , 360, 4 pages. quarter burgundy cloth, red cloth over boards, top edge red, dust jacket, cloth slip case with engraving tipped-in. large 8vo.

"A long forgotten masterpiece. Well worth reading for anyone interested in the American Civil War or what poetry once was." " Benet casts a wide net with his storytelling choices, bringing in a mix of historical figures (Lincoln, Davis, and the various generals,character arcs and the main plots revolve around the fictional characters. There is Jack Ellyat, a Union soldier; Clay Wingate, a young Southern aristocrat who similarly goes to war; Melora Villas and Sally Dupre, the women they love (Melora being a frontier woman, Sally a Southern belle); various other soldiers and women; and a few slave characters, such as Wingate's loyal servant Cudjo and the runaway slave Spade. On the subject of the blacks, Benet makes a point that his "heart is too white" to really tell their story, but all the same he does a laudable job of recognizing the complexities of the southern slave system, a barbaric cruelty that all the same produced some enduring emotional ties between people that make little sense to us. He also reminds us that the North, while wanting to free the slaves (though this was ultimately up for grabs; Lincoln is given a revealing dialogue to the Almighty about whether or not he should release the Emancipation Proclamation), was not a bastion of racial equality. There is a final scene between a white Pennsylvania veteran and Spade that suggests a grudging briding of worlds through shared war experience. Benet employs various different verse styles in the course of the poem, from rhyming couplets to ABAB rhymes to free verse without rhyme and limited metre, to prose on a couple of occasions."