The Wine of the Puritans

The Wine of the Puritans is an early work by American critic and literary historian Van Wyck Brooks, published in 1908. In this book, Brooks argues that the Puritan heritage contributed to cultural shortcomings in America. He further explores this theme in his later work, America's Coming of Age (1915), suggesting that the Puritan separation of spiritual and monetary matters led to a cultural split between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" publics in American society, which was detrimental to writers. Puritanism itself was a religious reform movement in the 16th and 17th centuries aiming to purify the Church of England.12