Remembrance Rock
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 Cover of the first trade edition | |
| Author | Carl Sandburg |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Paul Sample |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical epic |
| Published | 1948 (Harcourt, Brace and Company) |
| Media type | Print (clothbound hardcover) |
| Pages | 1067 |
Remembrance Rock is Carl Sandburg's only novel. Sandburg described it as
an epic, weaving the mystery of the American Dream with the costly toil and bloody struggles that gone to keep alive and carry further that Dream.[1]
Remembrance Rock was first published in a limited deluxe edition of 1000 copies (signed, numbered, two volumes), then published in a one volume trade edition.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had announced, in 1941, a film American Cavalcade that was to star Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, playing husband-and-wife teams from different periods of American history. The original treatment was rejected, and in 1943, the studio arranged with Sandburg to use the idea and then pre-purchased the film rights.[2]
In his review,[3] Perry Miller noted the novel's cast of characters essentially repeated themselves through time, and stated that as a result, the novel read like a "supercolossal script" meant for the same actors to play identical roles in different period costumes. Miller found it "disheartening" that Sandburg would try such a thing, unaware that this was a deliberate arrangement with Hollywood.
Personal significance
Carl Sandburg, his wife, and two daughters had their ashes buried under "Remembrance Rock", the 5-foot granite boulder whose name was the source for the novel's title,[4] in the backyard of Sandburg's birthplace and boyhood home.
