Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), November 29, 1845, vol. 2, no. 21, p. ???, col. ?

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Critical Notices.

Wiley & Putnam's Library of American Books. No. 7. Western Clearings. By Mrs. C. M. Kirkland, Author of “A New Home” etc.

Very few American books have produced as widely extended a sensation as Mrs. Kirkland's “New Home.” — The cause of this lay not merely in its picturesque and amusing descriptions, its fresh and racy humor, or its animated individual portraitures. It was the truth of its delineations that constituted its great charm. The West — the wild, rich, independent, glorious West — has been a field hitherto untrodden by the sketcher or the novelist. Some few brief glimpses of character we had, strange to sojourners in the civilized East, in the works of other writers; but to Mrs. Kirkland alone we owe our acquaintance with the home and home-life of the backwoodsman. She has represented scenes that could have occurred nowhere else, with a fidelity and vigor that show her pictures taken from the very life; with a fine chisel that cut breath itself, she has placed before us the veritable settlers of the forest, with all their peculiarities, national and individual; their free and fearless spirit, their homely, utilitarian views; their shrewdness, and sharp looking out for self-interest; their thrifty care, and inventions multiform; their coarseness of manner, united with real delicacy and substantial kindness, when their sympathies are called into action; in a word, with all the characteristics that stamp the “Yankee,” in a region where the salient points of character are not smoothed down by contact with society, as an original creation among men. — So life-like, or rather so living, have been the representations of Mrs. Kirkland, that they have not only been recognized universally abroad, but appropriated at home as individual portraits, by many who have been disposed to plead trumpet-tongued, if not like angels, against what they imagined “the deep damnation of their taking off.” This was to be expected, and inevitable.

It will readily be seen that a minute and truthful picture of Western life could never be given in any grave history half so well as in the form of stories, where the persons are suffered to develope themselves. This method has been in part adopted by Mrs. Kirkland, in her former sketches of Forest Life; and more entirely in the present volume. “Western Clearings” is a collection of graphic Tales, each illustrative of the customs, manners and ideas of a peculiar people, and descriptive of a new and uncivilized, but great and growing country. We can only glance at a few of these. “The Land Fever,” is a story of the wild days when the madness of speculation in land was at its height. Both it, and “The Ball at Thram's Huddle,” are richly characteristic. — Only those who have had the fortune to visit or live in these newly settled regions, can enjoy such pictures to the full. “Chances and Changes,” and “Love vs. Aristocracy,” are more regularly constructed Tales, with the “ universal passion” for the moving power, but colored with glowing hues of the West. “The Bee-tree” exhibits a striking, but too numerous class among the settlers, and marks, also, the length and breadth of the bitterness that grows out of an unprosperous condition.

“Ambuscades,” and “Half-lengths from Life,” we remember as the most piquant and delightful of the stories in an annual a year or two since, to which the book owed, according to the confession of the publishers, a large sale among the conscious and pen-dreading Western people themselves. Tom Oliver, in the first mentioned Tale, is admirably sketched “Half-lengths from Life,” has the [column 2:] heart's core and spirit of a backwoods life, on the trying subject of caste. “The Schoolmaster's Progress,” is unrivalled in truth and humor. The Western Schoolmaster — that walking nondescript — that stiff, solitary, unique figure in the drama of a new settlement — sublimely mingled with the associations of our school-days — occupying a middle position between “our folks” and “company,” where he “boarded round” — is depicted to the very life. The individual cannot fail to be recognized as the representative of a class. The occupation, indeed, always seems to mould those engaged in it into the same likeness. They all, like Master Horner, “know well what belongs to the pedagogical character, and that facial solemnity stands high on the list of indispensable qualifications.” The spelling school, also, is a new country feature which we owe thanks to our fair author for recording. How important that such good old customs should be preserved on the speaking page, when hereafter they may lose their peculiarity, if they be not effaced from the memory, in the march of improvement!

“An Embroidered Fact,” is a narration of actual events, described to the author by the hero himself. We like it less than the other stories. The incidents are singular — but not illustrative of the country. The same may be said of the tragic occurrences in “Bitter Fruits from Chance-sown Seeds but this last abounds in capital touches of character. All the horrors of the Tale are caused by the suspicion of pride; an accusation, says the author, as destructive at the West as that of witchcraft in olden times, or the cry of mad dog at the present day.

“Western Clearings,” we are confident, will sustain the author's high reputation as one of the most original and accomplished of American writers. Even her style has a touch of Western freshness that renders it, and her arch, playful satire, especially charming. The imaginative or creative faculty is possessed by Mrs. Kirkland in a high degree; but she is unrivalled in power of delineation; and in a marvellous felicity of expression, whereby a world of meaning or humor is convey ed in some brief phrase, she is approached by no female writer in the country.