Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table is the 1858 classic by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894), the Boston physician and wit whose table-talk essays in the newly founded Atlantic Monthly made both the magazine and its author famous. The book presents the conversation of a fictional boarding-house breakfast table, where the Autocrat holds forth on language, society, science, religion, and human nature, interrupted by the schoolmistress, the divinity student, and the other boarders, with poems including The Chambered Nautilus and The Deacon’s Masterpiece, the famous wonderful one-hoss shay, woven through the prose. The Autocrat established the conversational personal essay in American literature and remains the book on which Holmes’s literary reputation chiefly rests. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.