The Columbiad

Columbus lies in a cold Spanish dungeon, lamenting that his voyages have earned him chains instead of a crown. Then the walls shudder, the roof opens to light, and a radiant stranger calls him toward a vision of ages to come.

In Joel Barlow’s 1807 epic, the explorer’s hard-won discovery has brought him not peace but imprisonment, while others seize the wealth and power of the western shore. As Columbus grieves for the land he can no longer see, Hesper—the continent’s guardian spirit—promises that his deeds will yet be vindicated. Together they rise above Spain and the Atlantic, where a sweeping vision of America’s landscapes and humanity’s future begins to unfold. Can the nations born from Columbus’s voyage fulfill the promise of freedom?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.