Dimensions
135 x 206 x 24mm
When Jan Morris first went to the USA in the 1950s, she found herself antagonised by the myth of Abraham Lincoln, then at an apex of idolatry, a myth she came to dislike as sickly and synthetic. In innumerable successive visits she tried to make up her own mind about the sixteenth president and his legend, and after nearly half a century she has now crystallised her conclusions in this small work of art. Morris has not only travelled wherever Lincoln travelled, but she has willed herself into his time, too, in a mosaic of factual narrative, imaginative reconstruction and occasional fantasy. We view him in both his personal and his public capacities, politician and family man, commander-in-chief and writer of prose. In short, Jan Morris takes us as close as she can, within the parameters of historical accuracy, to the presence of Abraham Lincoln. She ends her book still not altogether admiring of his political legacies, but won over by him as an artist, a man of kindness and a natural American aristocrat.
