The White Tomb: Selected Writings (Classic American Poets Series, 3)

The publication of THE WHITE TOMB is literary archeology at its best. Merrill, an American, stood at the center of the international literary world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, living in Paris, belonging to the inner circle surrounding Mallarme, and defending Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman when such associations could still be damaging. However, since Merrill wrote his own work almost exclusively in French, French-speakers have tended to see him as American while English-speakers have found his work inaccessible to them. Now, a host of respected poets and scholars have translated a sizable selection of Merrill's poems and essays, allowing this fascinating writer to at last be widely read and appreciated in his native language.