Remembrance Rock was published by Harcourt, Brace in 1948. It is Sandburg’s sole novel — over a thousand pages spanning American history from the Pilgrims’ arrival at Plymouth Rock in 1620 through the American Revolution to World War II. A framing narrative (set in 1945) connects three historical novellas through a family of interconnected characters.
The first section (“The First Comers”) follows Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson in colonial Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. The second (“The Arch Begins”) is set during the Revolutionary War. The third (“The Arch Finds Its Keystone”) spans the Civil War era. The framing story connects these through Justice Domus Dodd Donn — a Supreme Court justice whose family has participated in each era of American history.
Critics were not kind: the novel was seen as Sandburg’s weakest work — too didactic, too sprawling, too clearly a vehicle for the same democratic philosophy he expressed more effectively in his poetry and biography. The characters are types rather than individuals; the prose, while occasionally achieving Sandburg’s rhythmic power, often sags under the weight of historical exposition.
Collecting Remembrance Rock
First edition (Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1948): Boards with dust jacket. Limited signed edition of 1,000 copies.
Market values:
- Trade first edition, fine in jacket: $20–$50
- Signed limited edition: $80–$200