Brooks, Van Wyck. New England: Indian Summer, 1865-1915.

New York: E.P. Dutton, 1940. In it, Brooks describes Boston in the post-Civil War period as, “Boston, congested with learning, was hypercritical, hyperaesthetic, cramped, self-conscious, tortured with notions and problems. Its conscience was always tripping it up, invading spheres where it scarcely belonged, for the mind had lost the power of deciding simply; and Boston was full of a sad sterility, the fruit of emotional desiccation, that masked itself in assumptions and sometimes in sneers.”