Edited and extensively annotated by the renowned poet and critic William Logan, this edition of Guy Vernon incorporates revisions Trowbridge marked in his own copy of the anthology. Back in print for the first time since 1878, the long seriocomic work about race, racism, and sexual intrigue in antebellum America reemerges as a lost classic of American literature.
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Front Matter Front Matter (pp. i-iv) -
Table of Contents Table of Contents (pp. v-v) -
Introduction: The Forgotten Masterpiece of John Townsend Trowbridge Introduction: The Forgotten Masterpiece of John Townsend Trowbridge (pp. vii-xxxvi)WILLIAM LOGANJohn townsend trowbridge (1827–1916) was born two years after the opening of the Erie Canal and died during the First World War. The friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Walt Whitman (at a time when Longfellow and Holmes refused to meet the author ofLeaves of Grass), he wrote gouts of poems, a string of plays, and at least forty novels, more than one a popular success. Having started with hack work in New York, with hack work he continued, growing so impoverished in the Grub Street of the day that at one point he took...
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Note on the Text Note on the Text (pp. xxxvii-2) -
Dramatis Personae Dramatis Personae (pp. 3-4)Guy Vernon, a wealthy plantation owner from Louisiana
Florinda, a penniless but beautiful young woman
Rob Lorne, a poet and journalist, Florinda’s suitor
Saturn, Vernon’s mulatto manservant
Captain Jones, captain of a Yankee steamer
Nancy, Florinda’s maid
Aunt, Florinda’s wealthy relative and guardian
George Lazell, Lorne’s college friend, now reading for the law
Doctor, employed to tend Vernon
With various servants, coachmen, members of society...
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I The Wedding Journey I The Wedding Journey (pp. 5-22)He was as fair a bachelor as ever
Resolved to take a wife at forty-five.
Indeed, how one so amiable and clever,
Good-looking, rich, et cetera, could contrive
Till the high noon of manhood not to wive
Was a vexed theme, and long remained a mystery
To those who did not know his early history.
And none knew that among his bride’s relations.
At Saratoga, where you meet all grades
Of well-dressed people spending short vacations,
Manoeuvring mothers, marriageable maids,
And fortune hunters on their annual raids,
He saw her waltz, and spite of every barrier
Of years or influence...
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II Homeward Voyage II Homeward Voyage (pp. 23-40)Know ye the land?—and so forth. Cuba seems
The later western Eden of our planet.
What wafted incense from the gate of dreams,
What heavenly zephyrs hover o’er and fan it!
With groves of orange, mango, and pomegranate,
And flowering forests through whose wealth of blooms,
Like living fires, dart birds of gorgeous plumes.
There by still bays the tall flamingo stands,
The sunrise flame of whose reflected form
Crimsons the glassy wave and glistening sands.
There, large and luminous, throughout the warm,
Soft summer eves myriads of fireflies swarm
Like the bright spirits of departed flowers
Nightly revisiting...
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III The Forsaken Bride III The Forsaken Bride (pp. 41-54)Foreseeing all her friends’ immense astonishment,
Going to meet it with an equal dread,
Florinda gave her maid a strict admonishment
Just what to say, and what to leave unsaid,
To questions soon to shower upon her head,
For, first suspicions having proved unjust,
The girl was granted all the greater trust.
Deep was the dear old Aunt’s amazement, meeting
At the hall door the unexpected bride.
Then, having passed the first tumultuous greeting,
“Your husband, Florie! Where is he?” she cried,
Still more bewildered—while the niece replied,
“Some sudden and important information
Obliged him to return by his...
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IV The Lost Bridegroom IV The Lost Bridegroom (pp. 55-70)Meanwhile Lazell accepted the commission,
Though it was long before he could report.
He moved with all the caution and precision
Of any practiced diplomat at court
Or strategist advancing on a fort;
And ’twas no fault of his if something less
Was compassed than unqualified success.
All Lorne could tell him of the strange event,
Or he himself could learn at Guy’s plantation,
Or at the bank from which the drafts were sent,
Or elsewhere, bearing on the situation,
Was added carefully to his equation
When, by no common difficulties daunted, he
Essayed to cipher out the unknown quantity....
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V Husband and Lover V Husband and Lover (pp. 71-82)I do not say that Guy was to be sorted
With wretches guilty of some heinous treason,
Only that he was quite absurdly courted—
To his annoyance, partly for which reason
He hurried to the mountains for a season,
With Mrs. Vernon, to piece on a truer
And happier ending to their bridal tour.
Happier no doubt it was, and yet not wholly
Happy for either. Vernon was oppressed
By a persistent, gentle melancholy.
It seemed as if the world within his breast
Were, like the peaceful world without, possessed
By the sad spirit of the early fall,
Which in...
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VI Saturn VI Saturn (pp. 83-102)Lorne undertook the business with a zeal
And promptness hardly to have been expected.
The lodging house had little to reveal;
And yet one clue that Saturn had neglected
Showed where his baggage went, and where he checked it
For a swift western train that afternoon—
Which Lorne, this point decided, followed soon.
And now commenced the rather curious chase
Of the escaping husband by the lover.
’Mid crossing trains Lorne often lost the trace
Whereby he hoped to hunt the pair to cover,
Which happy chances helped him to recover,
A friendly clerk or baggageman somewhere
Remembering Saturn’s face...
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Notes to Guy Vernon Notes to Guy Vernon (pp. 103-152) -
Appendix: Trowbridge’s Revisions Appendix: Trowbridge’s Revisions (pp. 153-159) -
Back Matter Back Matter (pp. 160-160)