During his own lifetime Nathaniel Parker Willis was widely recognized in Europe as well as the United States as one of the preeminent magazine writers and editors of his age. Today his literary achievements dim next to those of his contemporaries, such as Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe, whose work he often praised and encouraged. Yet, as journalist, travel writer, critic, raconteur, and celebrity, Willis appears time and again as one of his age's most notable writers.

Willis's grandfather, Nathaniel, founded the Independent Chronicle in Boston and a series of frontier newspapers in western Virginia. His father, Nathaniel Willis, was a noted clergyman who founded a series of publications, including the religious newspaper the Boston Recorder and the long-lived juvenile magazine Youth's Companion . Not surprisingly, then, the younger Willis received a strong, religiously oriented education. He attended the Boston Latin School in Andover, and then...