Oliver Wendell Holmes: 72 books

In this, the third series of Breakfast-Table conversations, a slight dramatic background shows off a few talkers and writers, aided by certain silent supernumeraries. The machinery is much like that of the two preceding series. Some of the characters must seem like old acquaintances to those who have...

In this classic of the supernatural, a physician puzzles over seventeen-year-old Elsie’s neurosis and fiery temper—only diagnosing her when he learns that the girl’s mother, while pregnant, was bitten by a poisonous snake. Exploring themes of original sin and redemption in the footsteps of Hawthorne, this 1861 novel coined the term “Boston Brahmin.”

“A MORTAL ANTIPATHY” was a truly hazardous experiment. A very wise and very distinguished physician who is as much at home in literature as he is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in referring to this story: “I should have been afraid of my subject. ” He did not explain himself,...

Sparkling with wit and humor, The Guardian Angel—first serialized in The Atlantic Monthly—paints a charming portrait of society in a New England country town in the mid-nineteenth century. Homes’ inspiration came from his belief that man was a product solely of his heredity and environment.

This 1860 sequel to the author's popular 1858 collection of essays, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, continues the genial, conversational quality of its predecessor. In order to continue interest in a second volume, this book is much more aggressive in tone and thought. It questions aspects of...

In this classic of the supernatural, a physician puzzles over seventeen-year-old Elsie’s neurosis and fiery temper—only diagnosing her when he learns that the girl’s mother, while pregnant, was bitten by a poisonous snake. Exploring themes of original sin and redemption in the footsteps of Hawthorne, this 1861 novel coined the term “Boston Brahmin.”

When a physician attempts toconvince a person, who has fallen into the Homoeopathic delusion, of the emptiness of its pretensions, he is often answered by a statement of cases in which its practitioners are thought to have effected wonderful cures. The main object of the first of these Lectures is...

John Motley, the great-grandfather of the subject of this Memoir, came in the earlier part of the last century from Belfast in Ireland to Falmouth, now Portland, in the District, now the State of Maine. He was twice married, and had ten children, four of the first marriage and six of the last. Thomas,...