Christoph Irmscher - Böcker

This one-of-a-kind, lavishly illustrated anthology celebrates Audubon's connection to the sea through both his words and art. The American naturalist John James Audubon (1785-1851) is widely remembered for his iconic paintings of American birdlife. But as this anthology makes clear, Audubon was also a brilliant writer-and his keen gaze took in far more than creatures of the sky. Culled from his published and unpublished writings, Audubon at Sea explores Audubon's diverse observations of the ocean, the coast, and their human and animal inhabitants. With Audubon expert Christoph Irmscher and scholar of the sea Richard J. King as our guides, we set sail from the humid expanses of the American South to the shores of England and the chilly landscapes of the Canadian North. We learn not only about the diversity of sea life Audubon documented-birds, sharks, fish, and whales-but also about life aboard ship, travel in early America, Audubon's work habits, and the origins of beloved paintings. And as we face an unfathomable loss of seabirds today, Audubon's warnings about the fragility of birdlife in his time are prescient and newly relevant.Charting the course of Audubon's life and work, from his birth in Haiti to his death in Manhattan, Irmscher and King's wide-ranging introduction and carefully drawn commentary confront the challenges Audubon's legacy poses for us today, including his participation in American slavery and the thousands of birds he killed for his art. Beautifully illustrated, with a foreword by distinguished photographer and conservationist Subhankar Banerjee, and rounded out by hundreds of historical and ornithological notes, Audubon at Sea is the most comprehensively annotated collection of Audubon's work ever published.

The time has come to take another look at Longfellow, America's most popular poet. Christoph Irmscher overturns the modern prejudice against Longfellow as the mere purveyor of literary comfort food. Examining his unpublished papers alongside letters written by his fans at home and abroad, Irmscher offers a fresh view of the poet's connection with his audience. Reviewing Longfellow's idea of authorship, his travels, and his translations, Irmscher demonstrates that Longfellow saw literature as a transnational conversation breaking down social and linguistic barriers. For Longfellow, the poet was less Emerson's "liberating god" than a distributor of cultural goods democratically shared by authors and readers alike. Longfellow Redux is the first book-length study of Longfellow's poetry since 1966 and contains numerous illustrations, including previously unpublished pencil sketches by Longfellow himself.

Poems Written Abroad is the first publication of the earliest collection of poetry by the famous poet, novelist, literary critic, translator, and radical, Sir Stephen Spender (1909-1995). Spender wrote and compiled this manuscript in 1927, when he was living in Nantes and Lausanne. In tone and diction, Spender's poems range from creatively traditional to unexpectedly innovative. They reflect his reading in Shakespeare and French poetry, as well as his absorption in music and modern art. They also document his struggles with his sexual identity and his emerging desire to devote his life, at whatever cost, to the writing of poetry.This beautiful facsimile edition, authorized by the Spender estate, faithfully reproduces the features of the original manuscript now held by the Lilly Library, including the frontispiece, an ink drawing by Spender himself, and little-known photographs of the poet. The editor's extensive introduction and detailed explanatory notes situate Spender's juvenilia in the context of his life and work and the history of modern poetry. The volume will appeal to readers with interests in modern poetry, gender studies, and fine books.

In 1919, Florence Deshon—tall, radical, and charismatic—was well on her way to becoming one of Hollywood's brightest stars. Embroiled in a clandestine affair with Charlie Chaplin, she continued to remain romantically involved with the well-known writer and socialist Max Eastman. By 1922, she was found dead in a New York apartment, rumored to have committed suicide.Love and Loss in Hollywood: Florence Deshon, Max Eastman, and Charlie Chaplin uses previously unpublished letters between Deshon and Eastman to reconstruct their relationship against the backdrop of the "golden age" of Hollywood. Deshon's tragic life and her abuse at the hands of powerful men—including Chaplin, Eastman, and Samuel Goldwyn—resonate with the concerns of today's MeToo movement. Above all, though, this is a book about an extraordinary woman unjustly forgotten: a brilliant writer and campaigner for women's rights, driven both by her ambition to succeed and a boundless desire for life.Rich in tantalizing detail, Love and Loss in Hollywood chronicles crucial years of American film history, overshadowed by the pervasive fear of Bolshevism after World War I, the Red Riots, and the emergence of the big studios in Hollywood. This beautiful edition features dozens of unpublished photographs, among them six mesmerizing full-length portraits of Deshon by Adolph de Meyer, Vogue's first fashion photographer.

In 1919, Florence Deshon—tall, radical, and charismatic—was well on her way to becoming one of Hollywood's brightest stars. Embroiled in a clandestine affair with Charlie Chaplin, she continued to remain romantically involved with the well-known writer and socialist Max Eastman. By 1922, she was found dead in a New York apartment, rumored to have committed suicide.Love and Loss in Hollywood: Florence Deshon, Max Eastman, and Charlie Chaplin uses previously unpublished letters between Deshon and Eastman to reconstruct their relationship against the backdrop of the "golden age" of Hollywood. Deshon's tragic life and her abuse at the hands of powerful men—including Chaplin, Eastman, and Samuel Goldwyn—resonate with the concerns of today's MeToo movement. Above all, though, this is a book about an extraordinary woman unjustly forgotten: a brilliant writer and campaigner for women's rights, driven both by her ambition to succeed and a boundless desire for life.Rich in tantalizing detail, Love and Loss in Hollywood chronicles crucial years of American film history, overshadowed by the pervasive fear of Bolshevism after World War I, the Red Riots, and the emergence of the big studios in Hollywood. This beautiful edition features dozens of unpublished photographs, among them six mesmerizing full-length portraits of Deshon by Adolph de Meyer, Vogue's first fashion photographer.

The definitive biography of a radical activist and intellectualMax Eastman (1883–1969) was a prolific writer, radical, and public intellectual who helped shape the twentieth century. While researching this masterful work, acclaimed biographer Christoph Irmscher was granted unprecedented access to the Eastman family archive, allowing him to document little-known aspects of the famously handsome and charismatic radical.  Considered one of the “hottest radicals” of his time, Eastman edited two of the most important modernist magazines, The Masses and The Liberator, and campaigned for women’s suffrage and world peace. A fierce critic of Joseph Stalin, Eastman befriended and translated Leon Trotsky and remained unafraid to express unpopular views, drawing criticism from both conservatives and the Left. Set against the backdrop of several decades of political and ideological turmoil, and interweaving Eastman’s singular life with stories of the fascinating people he knew and loved, this book will have broad interdisciplinary appeal in twentieth-century history and politics, intellectual history, and literary studies.

Issues of ecology - both as they appear in the works of nature writers and in the works of literary writers for whom place and the land are central issues - have long been of interest to literary critics, and have given rise over the last two decades to the now firmly established field of ecocriticism. The essays in this volume, written by art historians and literary critics, seek to bring the study of American art into the expanding discourse of ecocriticism. ""A Keener Perception"" offers a series of case studies on topics ranging from John White's watercolors of the Carolina landscape executed during Sir Walter Raleigh's 1585 Roanoke expedition to photographs by environmental activist Eliot Porter. Rather than merely resurrect past instances of ecologically attuned art, this volume features essays that resituate many canonical figures, such as Thomas Eakins, Aaron Douglas, and Isamu Noguchi, in an ecocritical light by which they have yet to be viewed. Studying such artists and artworks through an ecocritical lens not only provides a better understanding of these works and the American landscape, but also brings a new interpretive paradigm the field of art history - a field that many of these critics believe would do well to embrace environmental concerns as a vital area of research. In highlighting the work of scholars who bring ecological agendas to their study of American art, as well as providing models for literary scholars who might like to better incorporate the visual arts into their own scholarship and teaching, ""A Keener Perception"" is truly a landmark collection - timely, consequential, and controversial.

Reconsidering Longfellow is the first collection of scholarly essays in several decades devoted entirely to the work and afterlife of the most popular and widely read writer in American literature. The essays, written by a new generation of Longfellow scholars, cover the entire range of Longfellow’s work, from the early poetry to the wildly successful epics of his middle period (Evangeline, The Song of Hiawatha) to his Chaucerian collection of stories published after the Civil War, Tales of a Wayside Inn. Separate contributions discuss Longfellow’s financial dealings, his preoccupation with his children, and his interest in the visual arts, as well as the tremendous role his poetry did and will once again play in American literature classrooms in the U.S. All essays were written specifically for the volume. Many of them rely on unpublished archival sources from the Longfellow collections at the Longfellow House-George Washington National Historic Site and at Houghton Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reconsidering Longfellow is the first collection of scholarly essays in several decades devoted entirely to the work and afterlife of the most popular and widely read writer in American literature. The essays, written by a new generation of Longfellow scholars, cover the entire range of Longfellow’s work, from the early poetry to the wildly successful epics of his middle period (Evangeline, The Song of Hiawatha) to his Chaucerian collection of stories published after the Civil War, Tales of a Wayside Inn. Separate contributions discuss Longfellow’s financial dealings, his preoccupation with his children, and his interest in the visual arts, as well as the tremendous role his poetry did and will once again play in American literature classrooms in the U.S. All essays were written specifically for the volume. Many of them rely on unpublished archival sources from the Longfellow collections at the Longfellow House-George Washington National Historic Site and at Houghton Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Arkansas Regulators is a rousing tale of frontier adventure, first published in German in 1846, but virtually lost to English readers for well over a century. Written in the tradition of James Fenimore Cooper, but offering a much darker and more violent image of the American frontier, this was the first novel produced by Friedrich Gerstäcker, who would go on to become one of Germany’s most famous and prolific authors. A crucial piece of a nineteenth-century transatlantic literary tradition, this long-awaited translation and scholarly edition of the novel offers a startling revision of the frontier myth from a European perspective.

The Arkansas Regulators is a rousing tale of frontier adventure, first published in German in 1846, but virtually lost to English readers for well over a century. Written in the tradition of James Fenimore Cooper, but offering a much darker and more violent image of the American frontier, this was the first novel produced by Friedrich Gerstaecker, who would go on to become one of Germany's most famous and prolific authors. A crucial piece of a nineteenth-century transatlantic literary tradition, this long-awaited translation and scholarly edition of the novel offers a startling revision of the frontier myth from a European perspective.

Winner of the 2000 American Studies Network Prize and the Literature and Language Award from the Association of American Publishers, Inc.Early American naturalists assembled dazzling collections of native flora and fauna, from John Bartram’s botanical garden in Philadelphia and the artful display of animals in Charles Willson Peale’s museum to P. T. Barnum’s American Museum, infamously characterized by Henry James as “halls of humbug.” Yet physical collections were only one of the myriad ways that these naturalists captured, catalogued, and commemorated America’s rich biodiversity. They also turned to writing and art, from John Edward Holbrook’s forays into the fascinating world of herpetology to John James Audubon’s masterful portraits of American birds.  In this groundbreaking, now classic book, Christoph Irmscher argues that early American natural historians developed a distinctly poetic sensibility that allowed them to imagine themselves as part of, and not apart from, their environment. He also demonstrates what happens to such inclusiveness in the hands of Harvard scientist-turned Amazonian explorer Louis Agassiz, whose racist pseudoscience appalled his student William James.   This expanded, full-color edition of The Poetics of Natural History features a preface and art from award-winning artist Rosamond Purcell and invites the reader to be fully immersed in an era when the boundaries between literature, art, and science became fluid.

This book features Louis Agassiz’s seminal lecture course in which the Swiss-American scientist, a self-styled “American Humboldt,” summarized the state of zoological knowledge in his time. Though Darwin’s theory of evolution would soon dismantle his idealist science, Agassiz’s lectures are nonetheless modern in their insistence on the social and cultural importance of the scientific enterprise.An extensive, well-illustrated introduction by Agassiz’s biographer, Christoph Irmscher, situates Agassiz’s lectures in the context of his life and nineteenth-century science, while also confronting the deeply problematic aspects of his legacy. Profusely annotated, this edition offers fascinating insights into the history of science and appeals to anyone with an interest in zoology and natural history. “Christoph Irmscher provides a scholarly and insightful analysis of the intentions and beliefs of Louis Agassiz, a larger-than-life scientist of the mid-19th century and fierce opponent of Charles Darwin.  One of the foremost naturalists of his time, Agassiz’s encyclopedic knowledge and brash confidence sustained bold and often controversial theories, which contributed to extreme intellectual ferment at the dawn of contemporary evolutionary biology.”  James Hanken, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Harvard University, USA