Frederick Goddard Tuckerman published only one book of poetry during his lifetime, and it was a commercial and critical failure. Poems (1860) included ninety-eight poems, mostly short lyrics, more than half of which were sonnets. Tuckerman paid for the printing of the first edition himself and sent copies to many famous New England and New York writers whose approval he sought but generally failed to obtain. (Most who bothered to acknowledge Tuckerman's gift responded with polite puzzlement; a few others advised him patronizingly to regularize his "unmusical" verse; only Nathaniel Hawthorne understood both the quality and complexity of the poetry and the difficulty Tuckerman faced in finding a readership). Tuckerman must have realized that, whatever the ultimate worth of his poems, they were not likely to be appreciated in his own time. Despite a few favorable critical responses (notably from Hawthorne) and support from Alfred Tennyson in England, Tuckerman's...