The American Spirit in Literature: A Chronicle of Great Interpreters

Moving in and out of the Transcendentalist circles, in that great generation preceding the Civil War, were a company of other men--romancers, poets, essayists, historians--who s...

The changes that have come over the inner spirit and the outward expression of American life since Lincoln's day are enough to startle the curiosity of the dullest observer. Yet...

To understand the literary leadership of New England during the thirty years immediately preceding the Civil War it is necessary to recall the characteristics of a somewhat isol...

"There is what I call the American idea," declared Theodore Parker in the Anti-Slavery Convention of 1850. "This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy...

The United States of America has been from the beginning in a perpetual change. The physical and mental restlessness of the American and the temporary nature of many of his arra...

The Fourth of July orator for 1826 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was Edward Everett. Although only thirty-two he was already a distinguished speaker. In the course of his oration...

When the eighteenth century opened, many signs of change were in the air. The third generation of native-born Americans was becoming secularized. The theocracy of New England ha...

If we turn, however, to the literature produced in America between the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 and the adoption of the Constitution in 1787, we perceive that it is a li...

Enter now two egotists, who have little in common save their egotism, two outsiders who upset most of the conventional American rules for winning the literary race, two men of g...

For further bibliographical information the reader is referred to the articles on American authors in The Encyclopœdia Britannica and in The Warner Library (volume 30, The Stude...

The simplest and oldest group of colonial writings is made up of records of exploration and adventure. They are like the letters written from California in 1849 to the "folks ba...

(1902). Longfellow, Works, 11 volumes (1886), Life by Samuel Longfellow, 3 volumes (1891). Whittier, Works, 7 volumes (1892), Life by S. T. Pickard, 2 volumes (1894). Holmes, Wo...

CONTENTS Chapter Chapter title Page Introduction I. The Pioneers 1 II. The First Colonial Literature 25 III. The Third and Fourth Generation 43 IV. The Revolution 66 V. The Knic...

• Page 145: On Page 145, Hawthorne's The Snow-Image contained a hyphen, but the same title on page 148 did not have a hyphen: The Snow Image. • Page 153: Fellow-men was hyphenat...

Index • Page 276: Changed the acute accent to a grave accent in the spelling of Crèvecœur to match the text in index entry: Letters from an American Farmer, Crévecœur, 60, 68. •...

(1908). R. W. Emerson, Works, 12 volumes (Centenary edition, 1903), Journal, 10 volumes (1909-1914), his Life by J. E. Cabot, 2 volumes (1887), by R. Garnett (1887), by G. E. Wo...

• Page 90: Tree-tops is hyphenated and split between two lines for spacing in the clause "watching the birds in the treetops of Elmwood." On page 245, tree-tops was spelled with...

• Page 72: State-papers is hyphenated and split between two lines for spacing in the clause: "orations and pamphlets and state-papers inspired by." On page 67, state papers is w...

Webster, Works, 6 volumes (1851), Life by H. C. Lodge (1883). Rufus Choate, Works, 2 volumes (1862). Wendell Phillips, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters, 2 volumes (1892). W. L. G...

volumes (1856), Thomas Paine, Life by M. D. Conway, 2 volumes (1892), Works edited by Conway, 4 volumes (1895), Philip Freneau, Poems, 3 volumes (Princeton edition, 1902), Thoma...

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Life and Letters by P. M. Irving, 4 volumes (1862-1864). Fenimore Cooper, Works, 32 volumes (1896), Life by T. R. Lounsbury (1883). Brockden Brown, Works, 6 volumes, (1887). W....

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1894-1895), also 17 volumes (Virginia edition, J. A. Harrison, 1902), Life by G. E. Woodberry, 2 volumes (1909). Whitman, Leaves of Grass and Complete Prose Works (Small, Maynar...