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The First Comprehensive Historical Investigation into the Conway Cabal, the Attempt to Remove George Washington from Command
In the spring of 1778, General George Washington wrote to his friend Landon Carter about a rumored “disposition in the Northern Officers to see me superceded in my Command.” This was as candid a statement as the general ever made about the so-called “Conway Cabal” of patriot officers and politicians critical of his leadership. Most early historians of the Revolution took the threat to Washington seriously, but by the mid-twentieth century interpretations had reversed, with the plot—if one existed—posing no real danger to the commander-in-chief. Yet, as historian Mark Edward Lender reveals in his compelling Cabal! The Plot Against General Washington, clues found in original new research provide a more comprehensive understanding of the personalities and political maneuverings of those involved in the Cabal, and the real nature of the challenge to Washington.
    Rather than the “classic Cabal” of Generals Horatio Gates, Thomas Mifflin, and Thomas Conway in a plot to remove Washington quickly, the threat to Washington’s command was a gradual administrative attempt by the Board of War and political allies to take over the war effort. Reorganized in late 1777 under the leadership of Mifflin, with Gates assuming the board presidency in January 1778, the Board of War sought authority to determine military policy and strategic goals, all training, organizational, personnel, and logistical functions, and even the assignment of theater commanders. Had they succeeded, Washington’s title of commander-in-chief would have been utterly hollow. The Cabal tested Washington as few other things did during the war and perhaps tempered him into the man we remember today. Washington adroitly navigated the challenges to his leadership, meeting and defeating every attempt to curtail his authority. His response revealed a leadership style that saw him safely through the war, and gave him overwhelming support from his countrymen to become their first president.

Carl Schmitt was the most famous and controversial defender of political theology in the twentieth century. But in his best-known work, The Concept of the Political, issued in 1927, 1932, and 1933, political considerations led him to conceal the dependence of his political theory on his faith in divine revelation. In 1932 Leo Strauss published a critical review of Concept that initiated an extremely subtle exchange between Schmitt and Strauss regarding Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. Although Schmitt never answered Strauss publicly, in the third edition of his book he changed a number of passages in response to Strauss’s criticisms. Now, in this elegant translation by J. Harvey Lomax, Heinrich Meier shows us what the remarkable dialogue between Schmitt and Strauss reveals about the development of these two seminal thinkers.

Meier contends that their exchange only ostensibly revolves around liberalism. At its heart, their “hidden dialogue” explores the fundamental conflict between political theology and political philosophy, between revelation and reason­and ultimately, the vital question of how human beings ought to live their lives.

Offering all of the extant letters exchanged by two of the twentieth century's most distinguished literary figures, Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate: Collected Letters, 1933-1976 vividly depicts the remarkable relationship, both professional and personal, between Brooks and Tate over the course of their lifelong friendship.

An accomplished poet, critic, biographer, and teacher, Allen Tate had a powerful influence on the literary world of his era. Editor of the Fugitive and the Sewanee Review, Tate greatly affected the lives and careers of his fellow literati, including Cleanth Brooks. Esteemed coeditor of An Approach to Literature and Understanding Poetry, Brooks was one of the principal creators of the New Criticism. His Modern Poetry and the Tradition and The Well Wrought Urn, as well as his two-volume study of Faulkner, remain among the classics read by any serious student of literature. The correspondence between these two gentlemen-scholars, which began in the 1930s, extended over five decades and covered a vast amount of twentieth-century literary history.

In the more than 250 letters collected here, the reader will encounter their shared concerns for and responses to the work of their numerous friends and many prominent writers, including T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and Robert Lowell. Their letters offer details about their own developing careers and also provide striking insight into the group dynamics of the Agrarians, the noteworthy community of southern writers who played so influential a role in the literature of modernism.

Brooks once said that Tate treated him like a younger brother, and despite great differences between their personalities and characters, these two figures each felt deep brotherly affection for the other. Whether they contain warm invitations for the one to visit the other, genteel or honest commentaries on their families and friends, or descriptions of the vast array of social, professional, and even political activities each experienced, the letters of Brooks and Tate clearly reveal the personalities of both men and the powerful ties of their strong camaraderie.

Invaluable to both students and teachers of literature, Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate provides a substantial contribution to the study of twentieth-century American, and particularly southern, literary history.

In 2009 the University of Utah Press and the Utah State Historical Society co-published three volumes of long out-of-print journals, letters, and other documents from John Wesley Powell’s expeditions down the Colorado River. We are proud to announce the fourth and final volume. Cleaving an Unknown World collects Powell’s journal (Smithsonian Journal of History, 1968); Jack Hillers’s diary and photographs, previously published as Photographed All the Best Scenery, edited by Don D. Fowler (University of Utah Press, 1972); original maps from Francis Marion Bishop (Utah Historical Quarterly, 1969); Frederick S. Dellenbaugh’s letters (Utah Historical Quarterly, 1969); and John C. Sumner’s journal from the first Powell expedition (Utah Historical Quarterly, 1969). Roy Webb’s foreword provides the context for these disparate pieces.

This beautifully illustrated book features Hillers’s photographs—long regarded as a remarkable and unique record of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Cleaving an Unknown World belongs in the library of any reader interested in the exploration of the American West.
 

Renaissance writer Laura Cereta (1469–1499) presents feminist issues in a predominantly male venue—the humanist autobiography in the form of personal letters. Cereta's works circulated widely in Italy during the early modern era, but her complete letters have never before been published in English. In her public lectures and essays, Cereta explores the history of women's contributions to the intellectual and political life of Europe. She argues against the slavery of women in marriage and for the rights of women to higher education, the same issues that have occupied feminist thinkers of later centuries.

Yet these letters also furnish a detailed portrait of an early modern woman’s private experience, for Cereta addressed many letters to a close circle of family and friends, discussing highly personal concerns such as her difficult relationships with her mother and her husband. Taken together, these letters are a testament both to an individual woman and to enduring feminist concerns.

Renowned in her day for her scholarship and eloquence, Isotta Nogarola (1418-66) remained one of the most famous women of the Italian Renaissance for centuries after her death. And because she was one of the first women to carve out a place for herself in the male-dominated republic of letters, Nogarola served as a crucial role model for generations of aspiring female artists and writers.

This volume presents English translations of all of Nogarola's extant works and highlights just how daring and original her convictions were. In her letters and orations, Nogarola elegantly synthesized Greco-Roman thought with biblical teachings. And striding across the stage in public, she lectured the Veronese citizenry on everything from history and religion to politics and morality. But the most influential of Nogarola's works was a performance piece, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, in which she discussed the relative sinfulness of Adam and Eve—thereby opening up a centuries-long debate in Europe on gender and the nature of woman and establishing herself as an important figure in Western intellectual history. This book will be a must read for teachers and students of Women's Studies as well as of Renaissance literature and history.

This valuable resource for Dickinson scholars is based on the Thomas H. Johnson three-volume edition of the letters (published in 1958 and 1965) as well as the 1998 one-volume paperback edition. The primary importance of the concordance pertains to the poetic quality of the letters themselves. As editor of both the poems and the letters, T.H. Johnson recognizes this link when he writes: "the letters both in style and rhythm begin to take on qualities that are so nearly the quality of her poems as on occasion to leave the reader in doubt where the letter leaves off and the poem begins."

 The similarities between the letters and the poems makes the typical concordance search for the poet's thematically significant words and biographical references particularly relevant. Tracing Dickinson's thoughts through her correspondence complements the ideas within her poetry and thus provides a more comprehensive insight into the poet's personal and artistic development. The concordance will facilitate an understanding of words or concepts that may be obscure in the poetry by itself. Research into Dickinson's problematic style, characterized by gaps, disjunctions, and ellipses, will be greatly enhanced.

 By listing Dickinson's words together with their contexts and frequencies, the concordance provides the scholar with the ability to answer confidently questions of a statistical or stylistic nature. Finally, one of the most important functions of this concordance is to provide scholar, student, and general reader alike with endless opportunities to make exciting and unexpected discoveries by way of browsing.

In 1931, when the young F. A. Hayek challenged the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, sixteen years his senior, and one of the world's leading economists, he sparked a spirited debate that would influence economic policy in democratic countries for decades. Their extensive exchange lasted until Keynes's death in 1946, and is reprinted in its entirety in this latest volume of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek.

When the journal Economica published a review of Keynes's Treatise on Money by Hayek in 1931, Keynes's response consisted principlally of an attack on Hayek's own work on monetary theory, Prices and Production. Conducted almost entirely in economics journals, the battle that followed revealed two very different responses to a world in economic crisis. Keynes sought a revision of the liberal political order—arguing for greater government intervention in the hope of protecting against the painful fluctuations of the business cycle. Hayek instead warned that state involvement would cause irreparable damage to the economy.

This volume begins with Hayek's 1963 reminiscence "The Economics of the 1930s as Seen from London," which has never been published before. The articles, letters, and reviews from journals published in the 1930s are followed by Hayek's later reflections on Keynes's work and influence. The Introduction by Bruce Caldwell puts the debate in context, providing detailed information about the economists in Keynes's circle at Cambridge, their role in the acceptance of his ideas, and the ways in which theory affected policy during the interwar period.

Caldwell calls the debate between Hayek and Keynes "a battle for the minds of the rising generation of British-trained economists." There is no doubt that Keynes won the battle during his lifetime. Now, when many of Hayek's ideas have been vindicated by the collapse of collectivist economies and the revival of the free market around the world, this book clarifies Hayek's work on monetary theory—formed in heated opposition to Keynes—and illuminates his efforts to fight protectionism in an age of economic crisis.

F. A. Hayek (1899-1992), recipient of the Medal of Freedom in 1991 and co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, was a pioneer in monetary theory and the principal proponent of classical liberal thought in the twentieth century. He taught at the University of London, the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg.

Paul Celan (1920–70) is one of the best-known German poets of the Holocaust; many of his poems, admired for their spare, precise diction, deal directly with its stark themes. Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–73) is recognized as one of post–World War II German literature’s most important novelists, poets, and playwrights. It seems only appropriate that these two contemporaries and masters of language were at one time lovers, and they shared a lengthy, artful, and passionate correspondence.

            Collected here for the first time in English are their letters written between 1948 and 1961. Their correspondence forms a moving testimony of the discourse of love in the age after Auschwitz, with all the symptomatic disturbances and crises caused by their  conflicting backgrounds and their hard-to-reconcile designs for living—as a woman, as a man, as writers. In addition to the almost 200 letters, the volume includes an important exchange between Bachmann and Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, who married Celan in 1951, as well as the letters between Paul Celan and Swiss writer Max Frisch.

“Scarcely more breathlessly and desperately can two lovers ever have struggled for words. Little known among German literary historians, the relationship between these two poets amounts to one of the most dramatic and momentous occurrences in German literature.”—FAZ, on the German edition

The twelve letters that constitute this volume were exchanged by two of Russia's leading intellectuals, who, in the summer of 1920, weakened by the privations of the Civil War, were admitted to a municipal rest home outside Moscow. At the Sanatorium for Scientific and Literary Workers, they found themselves installed in opposite corners of the same room.

Day-long conversations having drawn them away from their literary tasks, the two then decided to converse in writing. Correspondence, the result, examines the condition and future of Western culture-whose values, according to the historian Gershenzon, have deteriorated into a deadly burden upon mankind, into mankind's ultimate prison. For the poet Ivanov, it is not the disavowal of a cultural heritage but the struggle to recover man's own unity with God that alone guarantees his true, his spiritual freedom.

Creator of such acclaimed works as the performance Meat Joy and the film Fuses, for decades the artist Carolee Schneemann has saved the letters she has written and received. Much of this correspondence is published here for the first time, providing an epistolary history of Schneemann and other figures central to the international avant-garde of happenings, Fluxus, performance, and conceptual art. Schneemann corresponded for more than forty years with such figures as the composer James Tenney, the filmmaker Stan Brakhage, the artist Dick Higgins, the dancer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, the poet Clayton Eshleman, and the psychiatrist Joseph Berke. Her “tribe,” as she called it, altered the conditions under which art is made and the form in which it is presented, shifting emphasis from the private creation of unique objects to direct engagement with the public in ephemeral performances and in expanded, nontraditional forms of music, film, dance, theater, and literature.

Kristine Stiles selected, edited, annotated, and wrote the introduction to the letters, assembling them so that readers can follow the development of Schneemann’s art, thought, and private and public relationships. The correspondence chronicles a history of energy and invention, joy and sorrow, and charged personal and artistic struggles. It sheds light on the internecine aesthetic politics and mundane activities that constitute the exasperating vicissitudes of making art, building an artistic reputation, and negotiating an industry as unpredictable and demanding as the art world in the mid- to late twentieth century.

The first five volumes of the Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain more than 1,300 letters written to and from Bentham over fifty years, beginning in 1752 at the age of three and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his attempts to set up a national plan for the provision of poor relief. The letters in Volume 1 (1752-1776) document his difficult relationship with his father—Bentham lost five infant siblings and his mother—and his increasing attachment to his surviving brother, Samuel. We also see an early glimpse of Bentham’s education, as he committed himself to philosophy and legal reform. The exchanges in Volume 2 (1777-1780) cover a major event: a trip by Samuel to Russia. This volume also reveals Bentham working intensively on the development of a code of penal law, enhancing his reputation as a legal thinker. Volume 3 (1781-1788) shows that despite developing a host of original ideas, Bentham actually published little during this time. Nevertheless, this volume also reveals how the foundations were being laid for the rise of Benthamite utilitarianism. The letters in Volume 4 (1788-1793) coincide with the publication of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, which had little impact at the time. In 1791 he published The Panopticon: or, The Inspection-House, which he proposed the building of a circular penitentiary house. Bentham’s letters unfold against the backdrop of the French Revolution and show that his initial sympathy for France began to turn into hostility. Bentham’s life during the years in Volume 5 (1794-1797) was dominated by the panopticon, both as a prison and as an indigent workhouse. The letters in this volume document in great detail Bentham’s attempt to build a panopticon prison in London, and the opposition he faced from local aristocratic landowners. 

The first five volumes of the Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain more than 1,300 letters written to and from Bentham over fifty years, beginning in 1752 at the age of three and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his attempts to set up a national plan for the provision of poor relief. The letters in Volume 1 (1752-1776) document his difficult relationship with his father—Bentham lost five infant siblings and his mother—and his increasing attachment to his surviving brother, Samuel. We also see an early glimpse of Bentham’s education, as he committed himself to philosophy and legal reform. The exchanges in Volume 2 (1777-1780) cover a major event: a trip by Samuel to Russia. This volume also reveals Bentham working intensively on the development of a code of penal law, enhancing his reputation as a legal thinker. Volume 3 (1781-1788) shows that despite developing a host of original ideas, Bentham actually published little during this time. Nevertheless, this volume also reveals how the foundations were being laid for the rise of Benthamite utilitarianism. The letters in Volume 4 (1788-1793) coincide with the publication of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, which had little impact at the time. In 1791 he published The Panopticon: or, The Inspection-House, which he proposed the building of a circular penitentiary house. Bentham’s letters unfold against the backdrop of the French Revolution and show that his initial sympathy for France began to turn into hostility. Bentham’s life during the years in Volume 5 (1794-1797) was dominated by the panopticon, both as a prison and as an indigent workhouse. The letters in this volume document in great detail Bentham’s attempt to build a panopticon prison in London, and the opposition he faced from local aristocratic landowners. 

The first five volumes of the Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain more than 1,300 letters written to and from Bentham over fifty years, beginning in 1752 at the age of three and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his attempts to set up a national plan for the provision of poor relief. The letters in Volume 1 (1752-1776) document his difficult relationship with his father—Bentham lost five infant siblings and his mother—and his increasing attachment to his surviving brother, Samuel. We also see an early glimpse of Bentham’s education, as he committed himself to philosophy and legal reform. The exchanges in Volume 2 (1777-1780) cover a major event: a trip by Samuel to Russia. This volume also reveals Bentham working intensively on the development of a code of penal law, enhancing his reputation as a legal thinker. Volume 3 (1781-1788) shows that despite developing a host of original ideas, Bentham actually published little during this time. Nevertheless, this volume also reveals how the foundations were being laid for the rise of Benthamite utilitarianism. The letters in Volume 4 (1788-1793) coincide with the publication of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, which had little impact at the time. In 1791 he published The Panopticon: or, The Inspection-House, which he proposed the building of a circular penitentiary house. Bentham’s letters unfold against the backdrop of the French Revolution and show that his initial sympathy for France began to turn into hostility. Bentham’s life during the years in Volume 5 (1794-1797) was dominated by the panopticon, both as a prison and as an indigent workhouse. The letters in this volume document in great detail Bentham’s attempt to build a panopticon prison in London, and the opposition he faced from local aristocratic landowners. 

The first five volumes of the Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain more than 1,300 letters written to and from Bentham over fifty years, beginning in 1752 at the age of three and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his attempts to set up a national plan for the provision of poor relief. The letters in Volume 1 (1752-1776) document his difficult relationship with his father—Bentham lost five infant siblings and his mother—and his increasing attachment to his surviving brother, Samuel. We also see an early glimpse of Bentham’s education, as he committed himself to philosophy and legal reform. The exchanges in Volume 2 (1777-1780) cover a major event: a trip by Samuel to Russia. This volume also reveals Bentham working intensively on the development of a code of penal law, enhancing his reputation as a legal thinker. Volume 3 (1781-1788) shows that despite developing a host of original ideas, Bentham actually published little during this time. Nevertheless, this volume also reveals how the foundations were being laid for the rise of Benthamite utilitarianism. The letters in Volume 4 (1788-1793) coincide with the publication of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, which had little impact at the time. In 1791 he published The Panopticon: or, The Inspection-House, which he proposed the building of a circular penitentiary house. Bentham’s letters unfold against the backdrop of the French Revolution and show that his initial sympathy for France began to turn into hostility. Bentham’s life during the years in Volume 5 (1794-1797) was dominated by the panopticon, both as a prison and as an indigent workhouse. The letters in this volume document in great detail Bentham’s attempt to build a panopticon prison in London, and the opposition he faced from local aristocratic landowners. 

The letters by and to Melville in this volume extend from letters he wrote at the age of nine in 1828 to ones he sent and received during the year before his death at seventy-two in 1891. To fill the gaps within the correspondence, 542 editorial entries are chronologically interspersed for letters both by and to Melville for which no full text has been located but for which some evidence survives.

This scholarly edition presents a text as close to the author's intention as his difficult handwriting or other surviving evidence permits. Fifty-two newly discovered letters by Melville, more than half of which are presented here for the first time, are added to those printed in the 1960 edition. This text is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).

Crete and James is a collection of letters exchanged by James A. Garfield and Lucretia Randolph Garfield during the mid-nineteenth century. Of the 1,200 or so letters written, the 300 included this work chronicle their courtship and marriage, and also discuss the Civil War, political affairs, and the details of daily life during the years 1853-1881. In them, we watch Crete grow from a shy girl into a self-confident woman who guides her husband in social and political matters. Through James’s flamboyant yet scholarly style, and Lucretia’s detailed, perceptive insights, we come to know them as though they were our close friends. Through their correspondence, the reader also meets the many people involved in their lives. Crete and James will be of great interest to those studying women’s history.