Historical recollections of life in upstate New York from Edmund Wilson, one of America's preeminent literary critics of the twentieth century.

“What I have written . . . shows the gradual but steady expiration of the world of New York State as I knew it in my childhood and the modifications that its life has undergone. It is true that Lowville and Boonville have changed less—unless perhaps Charlottesville, Virginia—than any other part of this country that I knew when I was a child. But, as has been seen, it has reflected all the changes that, to a greater degree, have been taking place in the life of the country as a whole.” - Edmund Wilson