Tradition and the Founding Fathers

Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1975. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good. xiii, [3], 151, [1] pages. Foreword by Walter Muir Whitehill. Chapters cover Belief in the Value of the Past; Tribulations of a New Nation; These Troublesome Commonwealths; The Middle-Class Tradition: Legacy from Colonial America; The British Tradition in America in Retrospect; Shakespeare for Everyman: Traditional Views; The Renaissance Tradition of Science and the Humanities; The Classics and the Eighteenth-Century Gentleman; Flight from Tradition: The University of Absurdum; Ivory Towers: A National Imperative; and The Obligation of Intellectuals to Be Intelligent: Some Commentary from Jefferson and Adams. Louis Booker Wright (March 1, 1899 - December 26, 1984) was an American author, educator and librarian. Wright was the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the author of numerous books about the American colonial period, and in 1928 he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1926, he received his Ph.D. from Chapel Hill. In 1931, joined the staff of the Huntington Library as an administrator and scholar. Much of his research at the Huntington was concerned with the English Renaissance and the colonial period of the United States. He began working for the Folger in the summer of 1948. While director, Wright used administrative insight gained at the Huntington to initiate more modern and efficient practices at the Folger, adding reference works and improving lighting in the main research room. With Virginia LaMar, Wright edited an early series of Folger editions of Shakespeare's plays, drawing on Folio and Quarto editions of the plays. Derived from a review by John Cary found on-line: Seven of the eleven essays in this volume appear here in print for the first time; nearly all of them were delivered as lectures. This book reflects several of the themes and concerns of the author's long and productive scholarly career. Dr. Wright's lectures exhibit his respect for the classical tradition, his hearty enjoyment of Shakespeare, and his impatience with the narrow specialization of scientists and humanists in our time. The dominant theme is certainly worthy of any historian, and worth the attention of any educated man—the impact of the ancient classical tradition upon the Renaissance, and its influence in early America. He describes the influence of the Greek and Roman classics and the Renaissance conception of the gentleman upon the aristocracy of colonial America. Dr. Wright is especially knowledgeable about English society and culture on the eve of colonization, and traces the influence of early English capitalism, English law, language, political thought, education, and values not only in the colonies, but in the United States through much of the nineteenth century. He is persuasive as to the British origins of such American values as hard work, sobriety, and the cocky self-assurance which led us to assume we had a Providential mission in this world. The volume's title derives from several essays on early America that are appropriate to the nation's bicentennial—the trials of the new United States of the 1790s and the famous correspondence of Jefferson and Adams late in life, as well as from those dealing directly with the classical influence in America. The essays gain a considerable charm from Dr. Wright's style and opinions. Wright is an old-fashioned man who believes in hard work, perseverance, human imperfection, humanity's commonality through the ages, and the importance of learning. There is much that is enjoyable.