F. L. Lucas on BATTLE-PIECES

Frank Laurence Lucas, 2Lt, 7th Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment, 1914
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

"... Here ["Sheridan's Ride" in Battle-Pieces and "Far Off-Shore" in John Marr] is an ear, and a far from unhappy boldness; further, whatever Melville's literary decay, the prose 'Supplement to the Battle Pieces,' in which he rams a little sense down the throats of the type of fool, common then as now, who professed moral indignation because the beaten enemy 'showed no penitence,' does prove that his sense and his humanity remained as sound as ever."

-- Authors Dead and Living, page 110.

Most of the chapter on Herman Melville in Authors Dead and Living by Frank Laurence Lucas originally appeared in The New Statesman (April 1, 1922), as a review of Raymond M. Weaver's biography Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic. However, the comment quoted above on Melville's best verses, and the prose supplement to Battle-Pieces, did not appear in the New Statesman version.

Authors Dead and Living (London: Chatto & Windus, 1926) is digitized and accessible for borrowing on the great Internet Archive.

• https://archive.org/details/authorsdeadlivin0000luca

Melville's writings are in the public domain, including the Civil War poems and prose supplement comprising Battle-Pieces and Aspects of The War (New York: Harper & Brothers,1866). 

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Bartleby in Burlington

From the Iowa State Gazette of December 7, 1853; found on NewspaperArchive:

Putnam's Monthly.

The December number of this valuable publication has been laid upon our table by a friend, and we are led to to the opinion after a hasty perusal of its contents, that its wide spread and rapidly increasing popularity, may be attributed to the superior reading matter contained in its pages. In this number is concluded "Bartleby, the Scrivener," which is a very interesting account of a strange being who occupied a corner in a Lawyer's office in the city of New York—and illustrates how strangely some strange men may live in the great city of Gotham. Bartleby always would "prefer not to"—and in this respect resembles some persons we know of not a thousand miles from here. "Wensley" is another interesting article concluded in this number, and to those who have read the former numbers the conclusion will be delightful. There are many other ably written and very interesting articles in this number, too numerous for us to name, but suffice for the present to say that this work is well worthy the liberal support of a reading people. It has not, like too many others, established its character with pictures, and only resorts to that fashion when science and art require an elegant illustration. When our January number arrives we will give it a more extensive review. --Burlington, Iowa State Gazette, December 7, 1853. 

The Iowa State Gazette was at this time a Democratic weekly newspaper, published every Wednesday. Since 1851 the State Gazette had been edited by Dr. Harvey, remembered as "an eminent citizen of Burlington" and "a man of intelligence and convictions" in one early History of Des Moines County, Iowa.

As ID'd by Frank Luther Mott, Edmund Quincy wrote the serial novel Wensley. Subtitled A Story Without A Moral, Quincy's "Wensley" originally appeared in Volume 2 of Putnam's Monthly Magazine, fourteen chapters in six installments: 

• July 1853, chapters 1-3
• August 1853, chapters 4-6
• September 1853, chapters 7-8
• October 1853, chapter 9
• November 1853, chapters 10-11
• December 1853, chapters 12-14; immediately followed by the conclusion of

• Bartleby, the Scrivener, A Story of Wall-Street

The book version of Wensley was published in 1854 by Ticknor and Fields.

Wensley: A Story Without a Moral 

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