This is the first full biography of Biblical scholar and theological seminary professor James Strong (1822-1894). It describes his upbringing, early and higher education, the schools and colleges where he taught, his academic colleagues, his contributions to the development of nineteenth-century American Methodism, and his numerous publications--particularly his Biblical Concordance (1894) which continues as a standard and essential reference work. It includes edited versions of selected sermons and letters never before published, as well as comments from his students, the details of his experience in the development of the early nineteenth-century American railroad system, and detailed obituaries and reactions to his death.

In nearly a half-century of missionary work throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, brothers John and Charles Wesley found the southwestern county of Cornwall to be among their most serious theological and social challenges. Eighteenth-century Cornwall lacked population centers, and small towns and villages were isolated by inadequate roads. The adult population consisted mainly of miners, fisherman and smugglers - men more interested in the bulk of their pocketbooks than in the status of their souls. And the clergy of the Church of England overwhelmingly opposed the Wesleys and their itinerant preachers, encouraging Anglicans to disrupt the Wesleys' outdoor services and to attack and burn Methodist preaching houses. Although the Wesleys made some evangelical progress in Cornwall, the question remained upon John Wesley's death in 1791: did the mission to Cornwall succeed or fail? This book considers the mission with a close reading of the Wesleys writings, and covers the overall history of 18th-century British Methodism and its contribution to the religious and social history of the British Empire.

Poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) became best known for his protestant hymns - since 1843, more than 2,100 hymnals published in the United States have included adaptations of all or portions of his works - despite the fact that Whittier never considered himself a hymnist. This book compares and contrasts Whittier's original published texts with those versions that were adapted as hymns, exhibiting the hymnodic elements of his poetry and allowing the reader to observe the methods and results of textual changes to Whittier's lines by hymnal editors from a variety of denominations. After a catalog of Whittier's poems that became hymns, it offers in-depth comparative studies of many of his poems and their resultant hymns. It includes a chronology of Whittier's life and works.

Emphasizes the English hymn as a literary entity within denominational and historical contexts. The author sets forth a number of definitions for hymnody and congregational song, and then examines the development of the various forms in England and the United States. With a listing of works for further reading, an index to all hymns discussed, and chronology.

Ernest Hemingway is famous for his description of food and drink in his short stories and novels. Very little has been written extensively and exclusively about this topic, but now Professor Samuel J. Rogal deals with this great theme in its totality. Food and drink and their description contributed to Hemingway's attraction to myth and ritual and Rogal gives an insight into his great contribution to literature. The work contains appendices and graphs listing items of food and drink and where they appear in his fiction and non-fiction.

Vachel Lindsay introduced a genuinely new rhythm into American poetry and was America's first real folk poet--superior to Sandburg and articulating a sense of awe, loss and resentment at the passing of the older freedoms and dignities of pre industrial America. His topics (Negro revivals, Salvation Army meetings, Chautauqua gatherings) would seem to be utterly dated---yet Lindsay was a modernist in spite of himself and influenced greatly later poets and writers as dis separate as Hart Crane, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, James T Farrell and William Faulkner as well as Jack Kerouac. Professor Rogal argues it was Lindsay's vision of the American Midwest heartland and its people than informed and empowered Lindsay's greatest poetry. And his performance skills enhanced his poetry during his short vagabond lifetime. "... This work argues for the continuing importance of Vachel Lindsay...the author certainly puts forth a strong case for the poet's importance to the American poetic tradition and that tradition's inherent bardic energies and geomancy" Professor T. Badin. D/American Literature, Zagreb University