Literature Network » Harriet Beecher Stowe

Flights of fancy ; Symbol of an era, the tiny hummingbird fired the imaginations of 19th-century writers and artists

Content courtesy of

From: The Boston Globe
Date: 20080420
Author:Michael Kammen - Michael Kammen teaches American history and culture at Cornell University and is the author of "A Time to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture."

Book Review

A Summer of Hummingbirds:

Love, Art, and Scandal in the

Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain,

Harriet Beecher Stowe,

and Martin Johnson Heade

By Christopher Benfey

Penguin, 287 pp., illustrated, $25.95

Strange as it may seem, during the decades spanning 1862 to 1882 especially, the hummingbird became a notable American icon, particularly among a tangled cluster of New England-based illuminati. As Christopher Benfey observes in "A Summer of Hummingbirds," a highly engaging and deftly written sequence of intertwined vignettes, the tiny, energetic, and brilliantly ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Other Articles on Harriet Beecher Stowe

About Our Articles: We've partnered with Highbeam Research to provide these article excerpts for your research needs. However, due to copyright laws, we cannot publish the whole article. To view these articles in full length you'll need to use the link above to access the free trial at Highbeam.