The Dante Club (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Matthew Pearl
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel and history
- Time of Work: 1865
- Setting: Boston
- Principal Characters: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Washington Greene, J. T. Fields, Nicholas Rey, John Kurtz, Augustus Manning, Benjamin Galvin, Artemus Prescott Healy, The Reverend Elisha Talbot
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction, Mystery and detective literature, History, Novel
- Subjects: Murder or homicide, Police, Nineteenth century, Literature, Poetry or poets, Ministry or ministers, Detectives, Boston, Clergy, Unitarianism, Mass murderers or serial killers, Massachusetts, College or university towns
- Locales: Boston, MA
The title of this novel refers to a group of Harvard University scholars who met weekly in Boston in 1865 to assist Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in completing the first full-length American translation of Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s epic work, La divina commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802). Most of the characters are real historical figures, and the Dante Club did, in fact, help Longfellow to complete his translation. The murders and the scholars’ activities in connection with them, however, are entirely fictional. It is unclear whether the author has pressed...
[The entire page is 1641 words long]
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