AT the end of his monumental biography Mr. Damon quotes the remark of Elsie Sergeant: "Amy Lowell was a dynasty in herself." To the reader who has won his way through the more than 700 large and closely-written pages of the volume this observation will seem no exaggeration. He will see that it was incumbent on the biographer of Amy Lowell to write the history of a literary epoch. The full measure of literary and especially poetical activity in the United States between 1912 and 1925 will have been borne in upon him and probably will have astonished him. For this was the day of a hundred schools of "Gists" and "Cists"; when the little magazines were spawned in the cities, the towns, and the colleges. Above the welter of schools and movements and pronunciamentoes and controversies, one figure stands out more dominantly than any other-- that of Amy Lowell, who was in the thick of the fighting on all fronts.

Amy Lowell's Champion

Critical judgment appears even this early to have settled down to the opinion that the poetical achievement of the Imagists is more historically than intrinsically important. Witter Bynner spoke pointedly when he said that "the imagists note with admirable accuracy all sorts of small adventures of the nerves," while they were aparently incapable of the larger adventures of the heart and head. Mr. Damon's championship of Miss Lowell's verse is at once gallant and learned, and the elaborate exegesis that he gives for each of the longer poems is worth having--for reference, at least; yet the 1930's remain unconvinced and will no doubt continue to read Amy Lowell in the anthologies.

Amy Lowell was a born controversialist and she was notoriously one of the most outspoken and fearless critics in the history of any literature. The poetic renaissance called her best faculties into play, and she used them with striking success from the time when her memorable--and triumphant--quarrel with the mercurial Pound began in 1913, until her death. She was never more magnificent than when confronted by ill-natured opponents in a lecture-room. On the other hand, there was never a fairer opponent than she, nor one more ready to make friends again. Yet polemics provided but one channel for the immense energy Miss Lowell devoted to the cause. It is good to learn that her patronage, far from being the indiscriminate largesse to favorites and bribery of editors that Pound and other charged, was on the contrary tactfully and intelligently bestowed. As a propagandist, her industry in writing about poets and poetry was only surpassed by her industry in talking about them. The most truly astounding aspect of her work for "the new poetry" is surely the indefatigableness she displayed in her lectures. She talked from Maine to Texas; and though it is said that no man is a prophet in his own country, Miss Lowell could jam Paine Hall and the lecture-room at the Boston Public Library--and repeat these accomplishments. She made a nation poetry-conscious.

Well Selected

Mr. Damon has accomplished something of a miracle in selecting and arranging the veritable mountains of material he had at his disposal. From her infant days Miss Lowell preserved her diaries, her books, her themes; and there are even paper-dolls available for those who wish to study the origins of genius. The immense mass of her correspondence is but the center of a vast collection of biographical data; every scrap of print about her that clipping bureaus could furnish--and for a dozen years her name was always copy--is carefully preserved. In view of this profusion, it is to the biographer's credit that his chronicle so seldom degenerates into a calendar.

The personality clearly emerges from the welter of detail about people and books and events. Here is Amy Lowell joining the guests at her table after the roast has been removed and, despite having two plates of soup, catching up with them before the meal is over. Here is Amy Lowell, self-described, at an Advocate smoker, "smuggled into an upper chamber, and kept quiet with cigars while they heckled me in true undergraduate fashion. I think I held my own; I tried to." We may be sure that she did. Here is the sincerity, the generosity, the fearlessness, the humor, and the irrepressible love of fun that made Amy Lowell what she was and remains