SOURCE: DeFalco, Joseph M. Introduction to Collected Poems of Christopher Pearse Cranch, pp. vii-xx. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1971.

In the following excerpt, DeFalco discusses Cranch's writing career and the critical response to his work by his contemporaries.

By any estimate Christopher Pearse Cranch must be ranked as one of the five major American Transcendentalist poets. Although he lacked the profundity and originality of Emerson, and although he never achieved the brilliant insights of Thoreau, at his best he approaches their more significant productions in poetry; in his ordinary efforts he is at least equal to Channing and Very. Most histories of American literature give Cranch only brief attention, and many assign him the pejorative label of “dilettante.” Certainly Cranch was a lover of the arts, and certainly he had diverse talents. One of the few transcendentalists who possessed a keen sense of humor, he brilliantly caricatured...