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CoBY DoWDeLL Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Guelph The American Hermit and the British Castaway Voluntary Retreat and Deliberative Democracy in Early American Culture From Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay's (16811759) decision to live self-sufficiently in a cave as a protest against slave labor, to African American recluses such as Robert Voorhis, the Hermit of Massachusetts (b. 1769/70), and Henry "Box" Brown (1815c.1879), to iconic figures like Henry David Thoreau (18171862), Emily Dickinson (18301886), John Muir (18381914), Thomas Merton (19151968), and Edward Abbey (19271989), many Americans have expressed their critical voices through voluntary reclusion from society. The last decade and a half of the eighteenth century, however, appears to have been an especially busy time for the American hermit. During this period, American printers published an unprecedented number of tales and anecdotes about the lives of hermits such as James Buckland's A Wonderful Discovery of a Hermit. . . . (1786); Samuel Brake's An Account of the Wonderful Old Hermit's Death, and Burial (1787); "The Hermit's Soliloquy" (1788); Abraham Panther's "A Surprising Account of the Discovery of a Lady. . . ." (1788); the narrative of Amos Wilson's hermitic withdrawal as a result of his sister's trial and
Early American Literature – University of North Carolina Press
Published: Mar 4, 2011
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