"Mr. Canby has made this book strictly the history of the river, the story of what the Brandywine has meant to him and to others. It is not state or military or city history, but river history in its relations to American life....Henry Seidel Canby, the author, known for many years as a critic and authority on American literature, was born on the Brandywine and his family has lived on its banks for generations. He writes of the river from a great warmth of personal affection. The Brandywine is a little river of big events. New Sweden was founded at its mouth in the seventeenth century; William Penn's Quakers settled on its banks; and the greatest chemical company in the world, the Dupont Corporation, began in its narrow gorges. At the mouth of the Brandywine the first log cabins were built and the first prairie schooner was devised to haul grain to its flour mills. During the Revolution Washington fought across the fords of the Brandywine and, defeated because of his ignorance of geography, still conducted a masterful retreat. In The Brandywine are pictures of the brilliant refugee society of Wilmington at the time of the last great cycle of European wars, of the plantation life of the iron masters in the hills from which the river flows, and of the unusual Quaker society which made a culture of its own in the river valley. " [from the dust jacket]
