John Sullivan Dwight

John Sullivan Dwight (1813-93) was, for much of the nineteenth century, America's leading music critic and an important figure among New England Transcendentalists. This biography charts his relationships with other writers and thinkers, as well as his evolution into a powerful and persuasive writer, while situating his story in its nineteenth century and Transcendental contexts. Dwight's enormous body of essays, reviews, and translations are illuminated in this biography and reveal the indelible influence that his newspaper, Dwight's Journal of Music, had on music criticism--the impacts of which still resonate today.