History was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1973 as part of a trilogy with For Lizzie and Harriet and The Dolphin. It contains 368 unrhymed sonnets — revised, expanded, and reorganized from Notebook 1967–68 (1969) and Notebook (1970) — arranged in rough chronological order from the creation of the world to the present. It is Lowell’s most ambitious work: a single poet’s attempt to contain the entirety of Western history in a sequence of fourteen-line meditations.
The Project
The sonnets move from biblical and classical antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the American and French Revolutions, the modern era, and into Lowell’s own time. Historical figures appear as vivid presences: Alexander, Cleopatra, Dante, Anne Boleyn, Napoleon, Lincoln, Stalin, Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr.
But History is not a textbook versified. Lowell’s method is associative rather than narrative. He selects moments of crisis, decision, violence, and insight — the points at which historical figures reveal their essential humanity. His Alexander is not a conqueror but a young man destroying himself through ambition. His Lincoln is not a monument but a depressive who happened to save a nation.
The form itself — the unrhymed sonnet, with its turn between octave and sestet preserved even without rhyme — provides both constraint and freedom. Each sonnet is a complete unit, a meditation that can stand alone, yet the sequence builds cumulatively to suggest the repetitive patterns of human history: power sought, power corrupted, empires rising and falling, art surviving or not.
Critical Division
History divided critics more sharply than any other Lowell work. Supporters (Helen Vendler, Frank Bidart) argued that the sequence achieved something unprecedented — a personal, felt engagement with history that avoided both academic dryness and romantic inflation. Detractors argued that the sonnets were often obscure, that the revisions from Notebook weakened rather than strengthened many poems, and that the project’s ambition exceeded its execution.
The book remains controversial. Some readers find it Lowell’s culminating achievement; others consider it an exhausting monument to a poet’s inability to edit himself.
Publication History
The first edition was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, in 1973. First printings are identified by:
- FSG imprint on title page
- “First printing, 1973” on copyright page
- Cloth binding with dust jacket
Published simultaneously with For Lizzie and Harriet and The Dolphin.
Collecting History
First edition (FSG, 1973): Fine copies in dust jacket bring $75–$200. The book’s length and difficulty limit its appeal relative to Life Studies.
Signed copies bring $300–$800. Lowell died four years after publication.
The complete 1973 trilogy is sought as a set.
History is for the committed Lowell collector — a massive, demanding work that represents the full scope of his late ambition.