Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Nature and Selected Essays, Penguin, 2003, originally published by J. Munroe and Company, 1836.

Emerson's first and most influential work on the post-Romantic philosophy of transcendentalism, Nature is a crucial work in the historical context of mid-nineteenth-century Boston.

Gibian, Peter, Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Culture of Conversation, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

In this important book about Holmes's place in American history, Gibian provides a literary and historical analysis of Holmes and his intellectual circle.

Hawthorne, Hildegarde, The Happy Autocrat: A Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Longmans, Green, 1938.

Hawthorne's biography of Holmes sketches the historical context surrounding “The Chambered Nautilus” and provides a useful overview of the poet's life and career.

Traister, Bryce, “Sentimental Medicine: Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Construction of Masculinity,” in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 27, No. 2, Autumn 1999, pp. 203-25.

Although it does not discuss “The Chambered Nautilus,” Traister's article provides an...