The Forest
eBook - ePub

The Forest

A Fable of America in the 1830s

  1. 336 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Forest

A Fable of America in the 1830s

About this book

A vivid historical imagining of life in the early United States

“One of the richest books ever to come my way.”—Annie Proulx, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Shipping News

“This is a wonderful book. . . . An extraordinary achievement.”—Edmund de Waal, New York Times bestselling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters—such as Thomas Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner—are well known, while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs.

The Forest unfolds in brief stories. Each episode reveals an intricate lost world. Characters cross paths or go their own ways, each striving for something different but together forming a pattern of life. For Alexander Nemerov, the forest is a description of American society, the dense and discontinuous woods of nation, the foliating thoughts of different people, each with their separate shade and sun. Through vivid descriptions of the people, sights, smells, and sounds of Jacksonian America, illustrated with paintings, prints, and photographs, The Forest brings American history to life on a human scale.

Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

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Yes, you can access The Forest by Alexander Nemerov in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Contents
  7. Author’s Note
  8. Part One: Herodotus among the Trees
  9. Part Two: The Tavern to the Traveler
  10. Part Three: Come, Thick Night
  11. Part Four: Panic
  12. Part Five: Animals Are Where They Are
  13. Part Six: The Clocks of Forestville
  14. Part Seven: Supernatural
  15. Part Eight: Four Greens
  16. Color Plates
  17. Part Nine: Three Levitations
  18. Postscript: The Shield
  19. Acknowledgments
  20. Notes
  21. Credits
  22. A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1952–2022