Prose Writings of Nathaniel Parker Willis (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Prose Writings of Nathaniel Parker Willis As long ago as 1854 Horace Greeley, in a letter to Willis, urged him to publish a selection from the best of his prose writings. "I have your big volume somewhere," he wrote, - alluding to the "Complete Works," published by Redfield in 1846, - but some venture less heavily freighted, he thought, would have a better chance of floating down to posterity. A generation has passed since then, and Willis himself has been dead nearly twenty years, yet the suggestion has never been acted upon. The swift oblivion that seems to have overtaken him may well appear unaccountable to those who remember with what eagerness his letters from abroad were read when they first came out in the old "New-York Mirror;" or how his sparkling sketches of life and adventure, reprinted from Colburn's "New Monthly," or issued in the fresh numbers of "Graham's" and "Godey's," made him, for a time, the favorite magazinist of America. Whether he wrote any thing really lasting, whether he is to enjoy a fee-simple in fame, is still in doubt; but many will say without hesitation that his lease deserves renewing for some years to come, and in this faith the present volume is offered to the public. 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.