(6 of 6)
New and Forgotten Stories. Brooks published The Flowering of New England first in his series because, finishing his life of Emerson, he was saturated with knowledge of the daily life of old New England. Happy in his subject for the first time in his life, he produced a book equal to those he wrote about.
In The World of Washington Irving he had no writers of the caliber he wrote about in The Flowering of New England. Hence he has made more of the minor figures, preachers in the Western wilderness, poets and songwriters in the South, genuinely gifted and strangely ignored men of genius, like the half-forgotten Charleston novelist, William Gilmore Simms, of whom an English traveler once said: "Simms not a great man! Then for God's sake, who is your great man?" Where the achievement of The Flowering of New England was to make old information fresh and meaningful, the achievement of The World of Washington Irving is to bring to life enough new and forgotten stories to inspire a generation of novelists.