Edmund Wilson is a sort of classic “Great Man” of American Literary scholarship, alongside Harold Bloom, Lesley Fiedler, Henry Louis Gates, and others. This is his “magnum opus” according to many commentaries I read, unless you believe that one of his other ridiculously long books of scholarship like To the Finland Station or Axel’s Castle happens to be his magnum opus. This book is a long (around 800 pages) history and reading (kind of in the old style) of Civil War literature leading up to, […]