The work reached the top of several best-seller lists, including Borders, Washington Post, and Boston Globe, and also appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List.
The plot is largely fictional, although the main characters are real, including many of their biographical details. Supporting and background characters are mostly fictional, as are those directly involved with the murders.
Plot
The Dante Club begins with the murder of fictional Massachusetts Chief Justice Artemus Healey, who had avoided taking a position to stop or support the escaped slaves of the South. Found by his chambermaid near a white flag atop a short wooden staff, Healey had been hit in the head and then left in his garden to be eaten alive by strategically placed maggots and stung by hornets. Then Reverend Talbot, who was paid by the Harvard Corporation to write against Dante, was found dead in an underground cemetery, buried up to his waist upside down, his feet burnt and buried over money that he had accepted as a bribe.
Members of the Dante Club, a group of poets translating the Divine Comedy from Italian into English, notice the parallels between the murders and the punishments detailed in Dante's Inferno. The club, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and James Russell Lowell, sets out to solve the murders, fearing that the truth will ruin Dante's burgeoning reputation in America, thus making their translation a failure, as well as the obvious problem that they would be virtually the only suspects if they reported this information to the police. Then, Phineas Jennison, both a wealthy contributor to the Harvard Corporation and friend to the translators (a "schismatic"), is sliced open exactly down the middle—all killed in extreme fashion and undeniable resemblance to the punishments of people in Dante's Inferno.
Eventually, the murderer is discovered to be a former Civil War Soldier Dan Teal, a man who worked at Ticknor and Fields and at the Harvard Corporation. Driven partly mad by the trauma of his war experiences, Teal hears Dante Club member George Washington Greene giving sermons on Dante to other soldiers, and becomes convinced that Dante alone understood the need for perfect justice in the world. Adopting a new name and identity (intending to become one with the poet, but being unable to spell "Alighieri"), he takes it upon himself to protect Dante and release Hell's punishments as indicated in the Inferno, in order to purify the city. Teal finds each of his victims when learning of their involvement in the stopping of the translations, which become their respective sins. The club eventually tries to capture him, with the aid of Boston's first African-American policeman Nicholas Rey, the only other person who saw the connection, while he is attempting to punish Harvard Treasurer Dr. Manning and Pliny Mead ("the traitors"). Mead was a student of the Dante course who helped betray his teacher by cooperating with Manning. Teal flees, then tries to round up the translators, to punish them for not embracing his "work." Dr. Manning—saved by Longfellow, Holmes, Rey, Lowell, and Fields—realizes the situation as he recovered from his attempted punishment of being buried naked in ice. He sees Teal with a gun to Longfellow, and Manning ends the murderer's life, thus returning the city to normal.
Nicholas Rey - 1st African American policeman, the idea of racism is addressed in the novel through Nicholas Rey
Chief Kurtz - head of police
Judge Healey - first killed, Reason for punishment- neutral
Reverend Talbot - second killed, Reason for punishment- simoniac
Phineas Jennison - third killed, Reason for punishment- schismatic
Dr. Manning - treasurer of Harvard Craper, traitor
Pliny Mead - fourth killed, student of Lowell's, also considered traitor
Pietro Bachi - former teacher of Italian at Harvard, and original suspect in murder
Dan Teal - murderer, soldier from the civil war, real name Benjamin Galvin. His fake name Dan Teal was accidentally created when he attempted to write Dante Alighieri on a piece of paper. Eventually, shot twice by Manning
Langdon Peasly - Boston's greatest safecracker, accused Willard Burndy of the murder
Willard Burndy- A safecracker accused of murder
Edward Burnett - Harvard student later James Russell Lowell's son in law
The Divine Comedy is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of Western literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator. His original works include the poems "Paul Revere's Ride", "The Song of Hiawatha", and "Evangeline". He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England.
Charles Eliot Norton was an American author, social critic, and Harvard professor of art based in New England. He was a progressive social reformer and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States. He was from the same notable Eliot family as the 20th-century poet T. S. Eliot, who made his career in the United Kingdom.
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 that rivaled the popularity of British poets. These writers usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He was also an important medical reformer. In addition to his work as an author and poet, Holmes also served as a physician, professor, lecturer, inventor, and, although he never practiced it, he received formal training in law.
The Porcellian Club is an all-male final club at Harvard University, sometimes called the Porc or the P.C. The year of founding is usually given as 1791, when a group began meeting under the name "the Argonauts", or as 1794, the year of the roast pig dinner at which the club, known first as "the Pig Club" was formally founded. The club's motto, Dum vivimus vivamus is Epicurean. The club emblem is the pig and some members sport golden pigs on watch-chains or neckties bearing pig's-head emblems.
The Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site is a historic site located at 105 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the home of noted American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for almost 50 years, and it had previously served as the headquarters of General George Washington (1775–76).
The fireside poets – also known as the schoolroom or household poets – were a group of 19th-century American poets associated with New England. These poets were very popular among readers and critics both in the United States and overseas. Their domestic themes and messages of morality presented in conventional poetic forms deeply shaped their era until their decline in popularity at the beginning of the 20th century.
Friar Alberigo was a 13th-century Italian from Faenza. His family, the Guelph Manfredi family, were banished in 1274 from Faenza by their rivals, the Accarisis. The Manfredis returned in 1280, with the aid of a traitor, the Ghibelline Tebaldello del Zambrasi.
The Divine Comedy has been a source of inspiration for artists, musicians, and authors since its appearance in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Works are included here if they have been described by scholars as relating substantially in their structure or content to the Divine Comedy.
Augustus Everett Willson was an American politician and the 36th Governor of Kentucky. Orphaned at the age of twelve, Willson went to live with relatives in New England. This move exposed him to such authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, who were associates of his older brother, poet Forceythe Willson. He was also afforded the opportunity to attend Harvard University, where he earned an A.B. in 1869 and an A.M. in 1872. After graduation, he secured a position at the law firm of future Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan. Willson and Harlan became lifelong friends, and Willson's association with Harlan deepened his support of the Republican Party.
In Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, the City of Dis encompasses the sixth through the ninth circles of Hell.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Windmill Cottage is a historic house and former windmill at 144 Division Street in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. It was the home of George Washington Greene, a former American consul to Rome and historian. It was purchased for Greene by his friend, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides is a pencil, ink and watercolour on paper artwork by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827). It was completed between 1824 and 1827 and illustrates a passage from the Inferno of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321).
Inferno is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. The Inferno describes Dante's journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen". As an allegory, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin.
The Saturday Club, established in 1855, was an informal monthly gathering in Boston, Massachusetts, of writers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and other notable thinkers of the mid-19th century.
Ptolemy son of Abubus was an official in the early Hasmonean kingdom which then controlled Judea. According to the book of 1 Maccabees, in 135 BC, he served as the governor of Jericho. While High Priest Simon Thassi was visiting, Ptolemy orchestrated the murder of Simon and two of his sons, as well as some of Simon's servants. This act of betrayal of guest right earned Ptolemy a place in Dante's The Divine Comedy; one of the sections of the ninth layer of hell described in Inferno is called Ptolomea, where those who betray guests in their home suffer.
The Dante Society of America is an American academic society devoted to the study of Dante Alighieri. One of the oldest scholarly societies in North America, it predates both the Modern Language Association, founded in 1883, and the American Historical Association, founded in 1884. After the German Dante Society, it is the second-oldest scholarly organization devoted to the study of Dante. The Society was also one of the first scholarly societies in the United States to have women among its founding members. The current president is Alison Cornish of New York University.
The third circle of hell is depicted in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the first part of the 14th-century poem Divine Comedy. Inferno tells the story of Dante's journey through a vision of the Christian hell ordered into nine circles corresponding to classifications of sin; the third circle represents the sin of gluttony, where the souls of the gluttonous are punished in a realm of icy mud.
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