The letters of Theodore Roosevelt and Brander Matthews Book

From 1888 to 1919, Theodore Roosevelt maintained a steady stream of correspondence with the flamboyant scholar and critic Brander Matthews. Together they sought to promote a literary and cultural "progressivism" both within and outside the walls of academe. This book, bringing together 271 letters, is the first collection of their extant correspondence. As an essayist, critic, professor of dramatic literature at Columbia University, and president of several literary organizations (including the Modern Language Association), Matthews was among the most powerful "culture brokers" of his day. In lively style, he and Roosevelt exchanged opinions on a wide range of literary, social, and political issues as well as on a host of writers and politicians, among them Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, James Weldon Johnson, Agnes Repplier, Rudyard Kipling, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Woodrow Wilson. Their chain of correspondence evokes a vivid picture of American culture at the turn of the century.