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The Robert Lowell collection at the Houghton Library comprises some 2,916 items: family and literary correspondence, poetic notebooks, and manuscripts covering a period of more than thirty-five years. This annotated guide to the collection is the product of detailed study of Lowell's work, both published and unpublished, and benefits from the poet's own review of some of the papers. Researchers will appreciate the index to the poems, which offers a key to the various drafts of each work. Of interest to all Lowell scholars and to students of twentieth-century American poetry. ... Read more

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Williamson examines Robert Lowell's poetic expression of his discontent with American civilization. ... Read more

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Robert Lowell (1917-77) was born in Boston. "Life Studies", published in 1959, was a watershed in American poetry, initiating an autobiographical project that became the dominating feature of his work, and shaped poetry on both sides of the Atlantic. He was the renowned and controversial author of many books of poetry, including "For The Union Dead" (1964) and "Day By Day" (1977). Faber published his "Collected Poems" in 2003. ... Read more

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In late 1831, at the age of 29, Mary Gardner Lowell and her young son George accompanied her husband, the leading Boston financier and merchant Francis Cabot Lowell II, on a voyage to Cuba, a newly popular destination for Boston gentry.They spent several weeks on the island, traveling from the bustling commercial city of Havanna to the slave plantations of Matanzas province before making their way up the Mississippi River by steamboat on the return home.

Lowell's journal of the adventure that took her from the safe and comfortable environs of Beacon Hill is published here in its entirety for the first time.She describes in vivid detail each event and observation of a journey that crossed many boundaries: between abolitionist Boston and slave-owning Cuba, between the parlor and the sugar mill, between refined Boston and the hinterlands of the Caribbean and river towns of the Mississippi Valley.As befitting a woman of her privileged class, Lowell's diary includes chronicles of social calls, parties, and invitations, as well as intimate descriptions of domestic and family life.She also comments extensively on the different social conventions for American and Spanish women, and provides astute accounts of the workings of the cane sugar mills, the brutal living and working conditions of slaves, and the tensions involved in "managing" the slave population.

Lowell is a colorful storyteller who writes with fine precision and a critical eye, salting her narrative with gossip and a good dose of humor about her experiences throughout the trip.Her journals are filled with stories of arrogant Spanish men, shipwrecks, slave uprisings, business deals gone bad, and scandalous marriages.

This captivating travel diary brings to life Mary Gardner Lowell and her times, and it offers illuminating insights into class, race, and gender relations as well as the evolving relationship between the United States and Cuba in the antebellum period.Co-published with the Massachusetts Historical Society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Recounts the journey of a twenty-nine year old wife
Ably edited for a contemporary readership by Karen Robert, New Year In Cuba: Mary Gardner Lowell's Travel Diary, 1831-1832 recounts the journey of a twenty-nine year old wife, her young son, and her husband on a journey to the island nation of Cuba. Mary Gardner Lowell's astute observations are peppered with gossip, humor, criticism, scandal, and stories of arrogance and danger. New Year In Cuba is highly recommended as being an engaging and vivid transport through time and space in a yesteryear travelogue adventure.

Rare document, wonderful writer
I first read this journal in its original format: a handwritten, early-19th-century document now kept in the archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society.I loved it on the first reading--Lowell is an articulate, insightful writer who recorded this journey for her friends and family back home in Boston. (Just as we take snapshots of a trip, 19th-century travelers wrote journals.)Now we can all read it without making a trip to the research library in Boston.

A well-educated, well-read woman, Lowell drew on a wealth of knowledge and considerable skill as a writer, but she was also somewhat more irreverent than she should have been, according to the conventions of the time.She took note of the local gossip, the scandalous histories of some of her hosts, and the harsh treatment of slaves on the sugar plantations.It makes for an engrossing read.

Professor Robert's introduction provides the historical context for the journal, covering the Boston background as well as the Cuban information. ... Read more

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Robert Lowell (Modern literature series) ... Read more

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From the publication of his first major book in 1946, Lord Weary's Castle, to a few years before his death in 1977, Robert Lowell held sway as the premier English-language poet of his time. This volume provides a representative sample of the critical discourse concerning Lowell's poetry, drama, and prose. It displays that discourse at its most vital and varied. Lowell's reputation, as the volume makes clear, has had its ups and downs; and in the decades since his death no critical consensus has emerged about any aspect of his work. The first three sections track Lowell's works chronologically. Most of his volumes receive one or two reviews followed by several scholarly essays, arranged in the order of their appearance. A fourth section provides broad overviews of his career, and the book concludes with an extensive bibliography. ... Read more

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