At first glance, D.H. Strother’s 1861 travelogue, “A Summer in New England,” appears to be an ode to nature. As I flipped through Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Strother’s rich illustrations of untainted rural America—of crystalline lakes, bears, waterfalls, grandiose mountains and towering pines—transported me back to the pages of Emerson and Thoreau. Convinced that I had stumbled upon another piece of celebratory transcendentalist literature, I eagerly delved into the story. After completing the work in full, however, I discovered—much to my surprise—that my initial impression had been completely inaccurate. “A Summer in New England,” it turns out, does not fit neatly into any one genre. Instead, it is a pastiche of popular literary tropes—an…show more content… Strother was “possibly the best known graphic artist in America on the eve of the Civil War.” A regular contributor to Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Strother wrote and illustrated more than two-dozen travelogues between 1854 and 1861 under the pen name “Porte Crayon.” By the time Strother died in 1888, however, his fame had faded away entirely—and with it, so had public recognition of his work. “The reasons for this neglect,” says the West Virginia History Online Digital Collection, “are many. As both an artist and an author, Strother does not fall neatly into a single field of study.” This—the very reason why Strother was not canonized—is exactly what makes “A Summer in New England” such a fascinating piece for examination today. While Strother may not have been canonized alongside the writers who inspired him, his work immortalizes literature’s inimitable impact during one of the most important moments in American history. In the middle of “A Summer in New England,” the narrator reflects that, “…the model man of the New World, in his rapid approximation to perfection, had outgrown the ideas of a former age, and felt the necessity of casting his shell, like a last year’s crab.” This quote perfectly encapsulates the story itself. Strother’s work, too, continuously “casts its shell,” adopting—then rejecting—various tropes of American literature. It’s a work of art in search of its identity at a time when…show more content… Miss Puffin: A few bubbles, airy and evanescent—unworthy of perpetuity. I am lacking in the energy and perseverance essential to great achievement. I am altogether a creature of feeling—I feel entirely too much! It is a misfortune.
At the end of this exchange, the narrator confides in the reader: “I agreed it was.” From this interchange, in becomes apparent that “A Summer in New England” is not only concerned with freedom and identity, but with beauty and language. During a defining period of American history, this story asks: What is poetry? What makes a poet? What is the purpose of art—and who determines this? I selected “A Summer in New England” for this assignment thinking that I knew exactly what the story would contain. Instead, I was met with a complete surprise—something even better than what I had imagined. In this piece of Civil War literature, I found a way in which to reflect on the works and themes we’ve spent the past semester studying. I found a work that may be long forgotten, but whose ideas—like the haunting “what’s next” —resonate to this
