It has been a hundred years since D.H. Lawrence published “Studies in Classic American Literature,” and in the annals of literary criticism the book may still claim the widest discrepancy between title and content. Not with respect to subject matter: As advertised, this compact volume consists of essays on canonical American authors of the 18th and 19th centuries — a familiar gathering of dead white men. Some (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman) are still household names more than a century later, while others (Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Richard Henry Dana Jr.) have faded into relative obscurity. My point is that nobody ever read them like Lawrence did — as madly, as wildly or as insightfully. “Studies in Classic American Literature” is as dull a phrase as any committee of professors could devise.

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Persons: Lawrence, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Hector St, John de Crèvecoeur, Richard Henry Dana Jr, Melville’s, Moby, Dick, ”, Farmer ”, — Organizations: “