The Shock of Recognition is a collection of literary documents which presents the developing self-consciousness of the American mind, from the middle of the last century when we first had a literature worthy of note, to the early years of this century when a new creative movement had begun. Correspondence between Emerson and Whitman, essays by Poe, Melville, Henry James, T. S. Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence on Hawthorne, are among the many documents from memoirs, journals, letters, monographs, and poems which show the shock of recognition which occurs not only when genius becomes aware of its kin, but when the very good writer is confronted by the very bad. All the documents in this volume have been printed in their entirety, and Edmund Wilson has contributed a general introduction as well as special introductions to all the sections.