A Fable for Critics is a book-length satirical poem by American writer James Russell Lowell, first published anonymously in 1848. The poem made fun of well-known poets and critics of the time and brou
Title page for A Fable for Critics, 1848
James Russell Lowell, c. 1840s
James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets to ri
James Russell Lowell, c. 1855
Lowell's birthplace and longtime home at Elmwood in Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Atlantic Monthly, November 1857
James Russell Lowell in his later years