Ernest Samuels's Pulitzer Prize-winning, multi-volume work on Henry Adams is now a compact, updated, one-volume biography. Henry Adams has been called an indispensable figure in American thought. Although he famously "took his own life" in the autobiographical Education of Henry Adams, his letters--more intimate and unbuttoned, though hardly unselfconscious--are themselves indispensable for an understanding of the man and his times. This selection, the first based on the authoritative 6-volume Letters, represents every major private and public event in Adams's life from 1858 to 1918 and confirms his reputation as one of the greatest letter writers of his time. Adams knew everyone who was anyone and went almost everywhere, and--true to the Adams family tradition--recorded it all. These letters to an array of correspondents from American presidents to Henry James to 5-year-old honorary nieces reveal Adams's passion for politics and disdain for politicians, his snobbish delight in society and sincere affection for friends, his pose of dilettantism and his serious ambitions as writer and historian, his devastation at his wife's suicide and his acquiescence in the role of Elizabeth Cameron's "tame cat," his wicked humor at others' expense and his own reflexive self-depreciation. This volume allows the reader to experience 19th-century America through the eyes of an observer on whom very little was lost, and to make the acquaintance of one of the more interesting personalities in American letters. As Ernest Samuels says in his introduction, "The letters lift the veil of old-age disenchantment that obscures the Education and exhibit Adams as perhaps the most brilliant letter writer of his time. What most engages one in the long course of his correspondence is the tireless range of his intellectual curiosity, his passionate effort to understand the politics, the science, and the human society of the world as it changed around him... It is as literature of a high order that his letters can finally be read."

This is a new release of the original 1951 edition.

The Selected Letters of Henry Adams is a collection of letters by American historian and writer Henry Adams. Edited and with an introduction by Newton Arvin, this volume includes letters to and from some of the most important figures of Adams' time, including American presidents, intellectuals, and artists. Adams' letters are known for their wit, their insight, and their literary quality, and this collection is a valuable resource for anyone interested in American history or literature. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"Congress bumbles on. Everybody laughs at its assumed spasms of virtue, no one is deceived by any reform pretenses". Clover Adams's political commentary in 1883 could serve as the lead of a legislative story today- that's one reason why it's so much fun to read her mail. ...What's striking here is how open the political scene was to women. Historians tend to insist that women occupied no political space before suffrage, or more commonly, they ignore women altogether... But Mrs. Henry Adams quickly assumed influential womanhood in Washington. As he was leaving his post as Secretary of the Interior, the Adams's old friend Carl Shurz brought her his report on Indian affairs, which she deemed "worth reading".

The story of the Adamses as lovers, domestic partners, and patriots comes to life in this collection of their intimate correspondence.