TY - JOUR
AU - Warren, James Perrin
AB - Book Reviews 1527 latter in his best-known work, Esoteric Anthro- Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Culture of Con- pology (1853), included detailed descriptions versation. By Peter Gibian. (New York: Cam- of sexual intercourse and argued that properly bridge University Press, 2001. xii, 398 pp. cultivated “passional attachments” were the $74.95, ISBN 0-521-56026-8.) true basis of social harmony. As Silver-Isen- stadt shows, the Nicholses’ advocacy of what a A recent addition to the prestigious series later generation would call sexual liberation Cambridge Studies in American Literature led them to be shunned not only by conserva- and Culture, this book argues that Oliver tives but by other reformers as well. Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) played a key role in an American “Culture of Conversa- The Nicholses created yet more contro- tion.” Peter Gibian’s learned study shows the versy by converting to Catholicism in 1857 flaws in the critical view of Holmes as a whole- and recanting their former advocacy of free some minor poet. Gibian resituates Holmes’s love. That last chapter of their American ca- work in antebellum culture and, in doing so, reers is particularly fascinating. Silver-Isen- revises the description of the culture itself. stadt recounts the Catholic leadership’s strug- While 
TI - Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Culture of Conversation
JO - The Journal of American History
DO - 10.2307/3092591
DA - 2003-03-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/oliver-wendell-holmes-and-the-culture-of-conversation-IfsCeZAQuS
SP - 1527
EP - 1528
VL - 89
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -