Letters from America
Publisher Description
This is a poetry book. The author started in May 1913 on a journey to the United States, Canada, and the South Seas, from which he returned next year at the beginning of June. The first thirteen chapters of this book were written as letters to the Westminster Gazette. He would probably not have republished them in their present form, as he intended to write a longer book on his travels; but they are now printed with only the correction of a few evident slips. The two remaining chapters appeared in the New Statesman, soon after the outbreak of war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In these short letters written mostly for the Westminster Gazette, the 26-year-old British poet jotted down his impressions of a year-long trip to the United States, Canada and the South Pacific. With an adulatory preface by Henry James, they were issued in book form in London in 1916, after Brooke's death, and have never before been published hereand with reason. The pieces consist mainly of overwritten descriptions of scenery and superficial generalities about New York and Boston, Canada's larger cities, Niagara Falls, the Canadian Prairies and Rockies, which any talented young writer might have put down to impress faraway friends. One letter, entitled "Some Niggers,'' praises the German colonizers of Samoa. Certainly not Brooke's finest writing.
