Description: Merrill was a key figure in the international literary world at the turn of the century, legendary for his ability to move back and forth easily between the American and the somewhat more sophisticated French literary communities.

The White Tomb makes available works by one of the most extravagant figures in the international literary world at the turn of the century. Many of Merrill's writings were translated and praised on both sides of the Atlantic. As a symbolist poet, he was among the fore-runners of modernism, and as a translator, he was crucial in making Mallarme and Verlaine known to English and American readers. Merrill defended Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman and published dozens of essays defending new writers and ideas. The White Tomb includes his poems in English as well as translations of some of his better known French poems. The book also reprints several of his translations from the French together with a selection of his reviews and essays, including his famous account of Whitman shortly before the poet's death. The White Tomb provides an introduction to an important figure in the cultural and literary world at the turn of the century.

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