The Biglow Papers — A Closer Reading

The Editor as Character

Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown's School Days, introduces himself as an enthusiastic reader who "fell in with the Papers about ten years ago" and has since found his admiration "deepening and becoming more lively." He admits he is "not clear" he has any right to call himself editor, as the book is "as thoroughly edited already as a book need be." This self-deprecating tone is matched by his vivid descriptions of the fictional editorial team: Parson Wilbur, with his "little vanities and pedantries" and "infinite faculty of sermonizing," and Father Ezekiel, a "brown parchment-hided old man of the geoponic or bucolic species." The editor thus becomes a character in his own right, blurring the line between author, editor, and persona.

Satirical Footnotes and Learned Digressions

The excerpts showcase Parson Wilbur's footnotes, which are a blend of classical erudition and wry humor. One footnote references Tully and Milton on virtue, then exclaims "Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint!" (May they perish who have said our good things before us). Another cites Persius and Juvenal to skewer politicians, while a third speculates on the Shakers' use of hooks and eyes as a "quiet reproof." These digressions—on Babel, Congressional debates, and the monk Copres standing in fire—reveal a playful, satirical mind that uses scholarship as a weapon. The footnotes often overshadow the main text, suggesting the real substance lies in the margins.

The Missing Poems and the Framing Device

Despite the catalog subjects, the excerpts contain no poetry about slavery or the Mexican War. Instead, the reader is given prefaces and footnotes that hint at a larger satirical project. Hughes mentions that the impossibility of keeping a copy of the Biglow Papers for more than a few weeks shows "how much an English Edition is needed." The poems themselves, written in dialect by the fictional Hosea Biglow, are the vehicle for political commentary, but the excerpts focus on the editorial frame. This gap between catalog and content suggests that the satire operates through indirection, with the poems' targets revealed only through the surrounding apparatus.

Readers approaching this edition should expect to navigate multiple layers of authorship and commentary. The catalog subjects point to the poems' concerns, but the excerpts demonstrate that the real work lies in the interplay between Biglow's dialect, Wilbur's pedantry, and Hughes's editorial enthusiasm. To understand the satire, one must read the poems themselves, which are not included here, and attend to the footnotes that both illuminate and complicate the text.

For years I’ve shelved that Biglow Papers, Hughes’s steady hand drawing out Lowell’s sly, heartfelt Yankee wit from the weight of war and slavery. It whispers a kind of tolerant mischief, the same warm, unbuttoned merriment I find pages later in Gay gods and merry mortals: some excursions in verse — A Closer Reading, where mortal folly is met with a wink, not a chastisement.