All Clever Men, Who Make Their Way

From the pages of forgotten journals and literary magazines Michael O'Brien assembles fourteen pieces that effectively challenge the long-prevailing notion that the mind of the Old South was superficial, unintellectual, and obsessed with race and slavery. In this book are discourses on subjects ranging from English empirical thought to neoclassical aesthetics, from the enfranchisement of women to transcendental theology, from the works of Hawthorne and Emerson to the social system of Virginia.

From the pages of forgotten journals and literary magazines Michael O'Brien assembles fourteen pieces that effectively challenge the long-prevailing notion that the mind of the Old South was superficial, unintellectual, and obsessed with race and slavery. In this book are discourses on subjects ranging from English empirical thought to neoclassical aesthetics, from the enfranchisement of women to transcendental theology, from the works of Hawthorne and Emerson to the social system of Virginia.

Michael O'Brien is Professor of American Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Jesus College, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was the longtime series editor of the Publications of the Southern Texts Society. O'Brien is the author or editor of several books on southern intellectual history, including the Bancroft Prize-winner Conjectures of Order, which was also a Nominated Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.