Over the Teacups

Over the Teacups is the 1891 final entry in the famous table-talk series by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894), the Boston physician, poet, and essayist who helped found the Atlantic Monthly and gave the magazine its name. The series began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table in 1858 and continued through The Professor and The Poet at the same imagined boarding-house table. Over the Teacups moves the conversation to a tea table and is the work of Holmes’s old age, written in his early eighties, with reflections on longevity, memory, fame, and the approach of death mixed with the verse interludes and gentle wit that made the series beloved. The book closes the most distinctive essay project in nineteenth-century American letters. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.