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Philip St. George Cooke

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William Gibson, USN

Augustus Ely Silliman

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anonymous book reviews in the New York Literary World, 1847-1850

Herman Melville's authorship of four book reviews in the Literary World is definitely established.  Melville is known to have written these book reviews, for sure:

Texts of these four reviews are available in The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, ed. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle, et. al. (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1987), pp. 205-238.

Norman E. Hoyle, in his Ph.D. Dissertation "Melville as a Magazinist" (Duke University, 1960), suggests plausibly that Melville wrote more book reviews for the Literary World than the four listed above.  Of particular interest to me is Hoyle's case for Melville's authorship of reviews devoted to books of western travel and adventure.  The editor of the Literary World Evert Duyckinck possibly regarded Melville as, in Hoyle's words, "his Far West specialist" (46).  The Literary World editor had stronger grounds than Hoyle knew for assigning reviews of western books to Melville, if Melville had ghostwritten Irvingesque sketches of western adventure back in 1840 for dragoon officer Philip St. George Cooke, and Duyckinck somehow learned of it.  Hoyle argues for Melville's authorship in 1849 of four reviews (besides Melville's known review of Parkman's Oregon Trail) in the New York Literary World concerning books of western travel and adventure:

1. Review of A Tour of Duty in California by Joseph Warren Revere, Literary World 4 (February 24, 1849): 172-173.
2. "The Western Trail."  Review of Oregon and California in 1848 by J. Quinn Thornton, Literary World 4 (March 3, 1849): 198-199.
3. "The Gold-Finders."  Review of Four Months among the Gold-Finders in California by J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, Literary World 4 (March 17, 1849): 246-247.
4. "Science of Gold Seeking."  Review of The Gold Seeker's Manual by David T. Ansted and The Miner's Guide and Metallurgist's Directory by J. W. Orton, Literary World 4 (March 24, 1849): 267-268.

Hoyle gives the texts of these reviews with some others in the Literary World that he suspects Melville wrote. Unfortunately, however, old volumes of the Literary World and Hoyle's 1960 dissertation are not widely accessible.  To encourage further study, I hope eventually to make scans available for all four book reviews listed above.  For now, scanned images of "The Western Trail" in the Literary World for March 3, 1849 are available here:

The Western Trail - page 198 image
The Western Trail - page 199 image

Text of The Western Trail - by Herman Melville? text