Word: lincoln
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...ABRAHAM LINCOLN: His SPEECHES AND WRITINGS (843 pp.)-Edifed by Roy P. Basler-World...
...Presidents have left much of a legacy to literature. The literary remains of Millard Fillmore or Benjamin Harrison, for instance, are scholar-carrion. Abraham Lincoln's writings, in bright contrast, remain fresh and readable...
Perhaps the reason is, as Carl Sandburg suggests in a preface to this book, that Lincoln had a wide variety of styles-a greater range than any other U.S. statesman or orator. He wrote gravely and inspiringly at times, colloquially and waggishly at others. Now & then, he even broke out into doggerel. Sample (from something called The Bear Hunt...
Conscious Craftsman. The editor of this collection-which the publishers say is the first "comprehensive" Lincoln volume of its kind since 1905-is the University of Arkansas' Roy P. Easier (The Lincoln Legend, etc.). All told, Editor Easier has transcribed, wherever possible from the original sources, some 250 speeches, letters and literary odds & ends. Many of the selections are obvious and familiar (the classic Gettysburg and Second Inaugural addresses, etc.); many are curious, little-known bits-such as Lincoln's grateful testimonial to a corncutter: "Dr. Zachariehas operated on my feet with great success, and considerable addition...
Taking issue with those who consider Lincoln's writing as an innocent or plain homespun talent, Editor Easier argues that it is the work of a conscious literary craftsman. Although he had little formal education, Lincoln studied rhetoric in his spare time, pored over Aesop's Fables and the King James Bible, wrote practice exercises in prose and verse. By the time he had reached 28, Easier declares, he had already acquired the skill "which marks all his later work . . . [although his] taste improves much thereafter, as his literary stature increases...