Cornelius Mathews, a highly visible figure on the American literary scene from the 1830s to the 1850s, has been viewed mainly as a champion for international copyright and literary nationalism. But he was more: a creative writer, the author of nonfiction sketches and essays, fiction, plays, and poetry; an editor of book-length works as well as newspapers, magazines, and journals; a journalist who wrote numerous book reviews and notices for over forty years; and a humorist and satirist. He was not formally a literary theorist but a practical critic with a well-defined agenda.

Mathews's roles as a member of the Duyckinck Circle and the Young America group in the politically and ideologically charged literary frays of the American Renaissance period have provided the focus of virtually all contemporary and modern assessments of the man and his work, largely due to the vigorous, abrasive tone he frequently used when...