The Citizen Poets of Boston is a major contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century American poetry. The breadth of study has brought to light poems that are far beyond previous conceptions of the values and capabilities of popular poets in the period from 1790 to 1830. The collection is stunning not only in the literary values of the various poems as comic and serious literature but also in its revelation of the details of the urban life of Boston in a unique, formative period of northeastern culture. In forty years of study in this field I have seen few works that rival this one in interest and importance.
