C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
G. R. Lomer, ed. The Student’s Course in Literature.
Annotated Reading List in American Literature
By Carl Van Doren (1885–1950)
N
A volume which represents the pleasanter side of early Puritanism.
Much of it doggerel, this was still the most widely read American poem during the first century of colonial life.
The chief humorous verse satire of the Revolution.
Several sprightly satirical pieces and a few poems of considerable grace and charm.
The first volume of the first American poet of real distinction.
This contains, with other vigorous and witty poems, the well-known ‘Marco Bozzaris.’
The brilliant beginnings of the first American poet of highest originality.
A collection in which appears the bulk of Bryant’s early poems, and much of his finest work.
The title poem is full of delicate fancy.
The clear-toned volume in which Longfellow commenced his poetical career.
Pieces of particular originality and permanence.
Nearly all of Emerson’s best-known verse.
Perhaps the most widely read narrative poem written in America.
Some of the most spirited work of one of the most spirited American poets.
The first really important collection of Whittier’s poems, and nearly all the good work he had yet done.
Gentle, at times sentimental, but still the classic record in verse of Indian life and manners.
The point at which several important later developments in American verse may be said to have had their origin.
One of the most cheerful and truthful reconstructions of Puritan life.
The ripest of Holmes’s verse.
Bryant’s best later work.
No other book of American poetry contains so many good tales in verse.
Some of the strongest verse, both gay and grave, called forth by the Civil War.
A noble and dignified elegy.
Whitman’s great poems on the war; the most notable are those on the death of Lincoln.
The best picture in verse of New England rural life.
A fine and faithful translation.
The best of Emerson’s later verse.
A group of pleasant stories.
Among modern translations of Homer one of the most stately and lucid.
One of the most vigorous and poetical translations in English.
Splendid rhapsodies, among the most thoughtful Whitman wrote.
Robust and tempestuous poems of the Far West.
Among the most finished and sincere work produced by a Confederate poet.
Impassioned, musical, distinctive.
Interesting and widely-read dialect poems upon country life in the Middle West.
The chief work of a cultivated and able poet.
Bunner was a highly gifted writer of light verse.
The characteristic work of an exceedingly accomplished artist in verse.
Few American poets have been at once so thoughtful and so gay.
The most pungent and striking lyrics in American poetry.
Among the freshest and easiest of modern versions of Horace.
Written in collaboration with Bliss Carman. Ringing lyrics in celebration of a free life.
Among these carefully wrought poems, ‘An Ode in Time of Hesitation’ stands out as one of the noblest American comments upon political affairs.
Compact, witty, and elevated verse by a poet of remarkable gifts.
Reserved and thoughtful work of high excellence.
Powerful, original, irregular.
The most widely discussed American verse of the early twentieth century, original and truthful.
Poems in which rural New England has found a new voice.
The American leader of the poetical school called the Imagists, and a poet of vividness and distinction.
An essential book for the student of American poetry is E. C. Stedman’s ‘American Anthology,’ which should be supplemented, for more recent poets, by J. B. Rittenhouse’s ‘Little Book of Modern Verse,’ Harriet Monroe’s ‘The New Poetry’ and W. S. Braithwaite’s ‘Anthology of Magazine Verse’ (annual), the various volumes of which give a valuable survey of contemporary productions.
In the L
The first American tragedy to be acted in America by professional actors.
The first American comedy, and the first appearance of the “stage Yankee.”
Dunlap is the most important figure in the beginnings of the American stage.
Two of the earliest plays on colonial history.
Payne was the author of ‘Home Sweet Home’ and once famous both as actor and playwright.
The best plays of a playwright who had a great success in romantic tragedies written for Edwin Forrest.
A successful romantic comedy in verse by a facile poet.
An interesting satire on New York society.
Boker had real merit as a poet. His ‘Francesca da Rimini’ has probably greater merit as an acting play than any other written in the United States before the Civil War.
One of the best American comedies as played by one of the best American actors.
Another famous stage version of a famous American story.
Two plays by an author who made realism a habit of the stage in America.
Early instances of American stage realism.
Melodramatic but exciting Civil War plays.
Fitch is never profound nor very subtle, but he had great technical adroitness and was probably the most successful of all American playwrights.
Plays nearly as adroit as Clyde Fitch’s and of more literary distinction.
Representative work by the most finished and careful producer in American dramatic history.
American social comedy at its best.
Among the few later American plays written with poetic depth and insight.
Work always above the average in interest and execution.
Skilful and effective plays.
Sound and clear-cut serious comedies.
Powerful romances of mystery and horror, with the scenes laid, for the most part, in Pennsylvania.
Five volumes which make up the great classic of the early American frontier. They deal, in the order here given, with the life and deeds of Natty Bumppo, the most famous character in American fiction.
The Spy. 1821.
One of the most exciting novels ever written about the Revolution.
The Pilot. 1842. The Red Rover. 1828. The Wing-and-Wing. 1842.
Cooper’s three most important sea tales.
Satanstoe. 1846.
A somewhat neglected masterpiece with its scene in colonial New York.
A striking romance based on the Yemassee War in South Carolina, 1715.
The Partisans. 1835. Melichampe. 1836. Katherine Walton. 1851. The Sword and Distaff, also known as Woodcraft. 1853.
Four novels celebrating partisan warfare in the Carolinas at the time of the Revolution.
Two books telling a connected story of adventure in the South Sea.
Moby Dick. 1851.
The chief novel about whaling, and one of the chief sea stories of the world.
Often called the greatest American novel, and certainly one of the most profound and beautiful romances in existence.
The House of the Seven Gables. 1851. The Blithedale Romance. 1852. The Marble Faun. 1860.
Novels little inferior, for subtlety and insight and grace, to ‘The Scarlet Letter.’ ‘The Blithedale Romance’ is commonly held the least important of the four.
One of the most influential novels ever written and still effective, even now that slavery has been abolished, by reason of its vigor and intensity.
Oldtown Folks. 1869.
Among the first and best of realistic narratives of New England village life.
Perhaps the best of American books for girls.
A classic story of boyhood.
A notable study of social conditions on the Indiana frontier.
Truthful, delicate, and finely constructed stories by a consummate artist who produced a body of work which stands alone for its representation of American scenes, characters, and ideals in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Perhaps the best work by one of the most scrupulous craftsmen among modern writers of fiction, particularly notable for his studies of international society.
Although it is difficult to classify the writings of an author so unconventional, these may reasonably be called novels, and contain, with few exceptions, the memorable work of the most widely read American of his generation.
Four novels by a versatile and accomplished novelist, which are commonly thought his best work. They deal with modern life in Rome.
The first of these is nearly the best of the historical novels produced in such profusion at the end of the nineteenth century.
A peculiarly graceful romance.
Delicate stories of life in an idealized Kentucky.
Well-considered analyses of modern American life by a thoughtful author.
Two powerful novels which, with another never written, would have made up an epic trilogy on the production, distribution, and consumption of American wheat.
A striking novel of cowboy life in the Far West.
London was one of the foremost among the numerous authors who, in the early years of the twentieth century, aimed to handle the primitive emotions in fiction.
Among living American novelists in 1917 one of the most distinguished.
The first two novels of a powerful unwholesome trilogy dealing with an American business man.
The student is also referred to H. W. Boynton’s ‘Fiction in the Early Twentieth Century’ and Dorothy Brewster’s ‘Early Twentieth-Century Fiction.’
For further information the student is referred to J. F. Jameson’s ‘History of Historical Writing in America,’ 1891. Later writers who would be read in any extended study of American speculation include J. M. Baldwin, G. T. Ladd, W. T. Harris. For these the student should consult Woodbridge Riley’s ‘American Thought’ (1915).
A. Reading List of Stories in the Library‘Some Account of Thomas Tucker’ ‘Paul Felton’ ‘The Revolt of “Mother”’ ‘The Missionary Sheriff’ ‘The Man Without a Country’ ‘Why Brother Wolf Didn’t Eat the Little Rabbits’ ‘Brother Mud-Turtle’s Trickery’ ‘Uncle Remus at the Telephone’ ‘An Heiress of Red Dog’ ‘Archibald Malmaison’ ‘The Old Manse’ ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ ‘The Madonna of the Future’ ‘The Episode of the Marques de Valdeflores’ ‘Miss Tempy’s Watchers’ ‘The Early Majority of Mr. Thomas Watts’ ‘The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s Cove’ ‘The Diamond Lens’ ‘The Burial of the Guns’ ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom’ ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ ‘The Cop and the Anthem’ ‘Butterneggs’ ‘The Godmothers’ ‘The Widder Johnsing’ ‘A Boy and his Dog’ ‘In the Gray Goth’ ‘Bobbo’ ‘Specimen Jones’ ‘Rodman, the Keeper’
During the first third of the nineteenth century Irving was easily the most important writer of short stories in English.
The first collection of tales by an author who had, if less humor than Irving, equal art and charm and greater depth and passion.
Two collections of stories, already given to the world in magazines, which mark the beginning of a new art of short-story writing, and which have not been surpassed for intensity of effect by any which have been produced upon Poe’s models.
Hawthorne’s later stories show a further enrichment of meaning and style.
The first appearance in book form of Mark Twain’s work.
One of the first volumes of American short stories to make use of scrupulous realism.
The first volume by the man who remains most important of all who have written of California and the Far West.
Racy tales of Georgia life and manners.
Ingenious and surprising stories told with careful art.
Typical of the many later volumes in which Harte continued to exploit California.
A volume worthy to stand with the best of Hawthorne’s for art, and generally above his work for realism.
Truthful and pleasant tales of Louisiana.
Harris is without a peer among those who have written negro stories.
Typical examples of Stockton’s whimsical and fantastic manner.
Sympathetic records of “our Southern Highlanders.”
Some very clever tales which had appeared in magazines more than twenty years before.
Affectionate reconstructions of conditions in Virginia before and during the Civil War.
Excellent studies of the tragicomedy of rural New England.
Among the most ingenious of American stories.
Elaborated pictures of an idealized Kentucky.
Delicate and veracious narratives of life in Maine.
Pleasant records of an idyllic Pennsylvania community.
The most influential recent American writer of short stories.
Much the best of all American satiric and humorous verse, and some of the best dialect poetry in existence. The work of a great scholar, the poems still pretend to be the comments of a Yankee farmer upon the Mexican War and the Civil War. In his prose essays and in his non-dialect verse Lowell, though full of spirit, is somewhat less original.
The most effective and most popular American humorist before Mark Twain, and one of the first to make extended use of the humorous lecture. He has proved more permanent than the other humorists who flourished at the time of the Civil War: G. H. Derby (pseud. “John Phœnix”), C. H. Smith (pseud. “Bill Arp”), R. H. Newell (pseud. “Orpheus C. Kerr”), D. R. Locke (pseud. “Petroleum V. Nasby”).
The best of American homely aphorists, and one of the first to make misspelling a specialty.
These are the works by which Mark Twain is most clearly connected with the tradition of American humorists—books, that is, in which he appears to be a hilarious newspaper correspondent. Both in these and the more regular novels and stories which he later preferred to write (see also under Novels and Short Stories) he brings American popular humor to its highest point, and is daring, robust, tender, ironical, shrewd, laughable, serious.
Verses noted for their comical use of German-American English.
Dialect verse of remarkable comic vigor and originality.
Writings which, with Hay’s ‘Pike County Ballads,’ gave the so-called Pike County dialect its place in literature.
The classics of negro humor and dialect.
A most amusing newspaper paragrapher, a writer of peculiar charm in both prose and verse, Field was probably a more cultivated man than any other professional American humorist. His verses about children have been equalled by no other of his countrymen. He deserves much credit for the large popularity of the humorous section known as the “column” in most contemporary American newspapers.
One of the few American humorists who are better known for verse than for prose, Riley stands alone among later poets in the completeness with which he has expressed the moods and thought of the average provincial American. He is practically the creator of the Hoosier dialect, as he is the chief writer who has used it.
Penetrating comments upon recent social and political affairs. It will be observed that Mr. Dooley, the most popular humorous figure in recent American literature, is not a farmer as was Josh Billings in the days when the nation was still largely agricultural, but a saloon-keeper in Chicago, now that the city bulks so large in the American imagination.
Unfailingly shrewd stories in slang unmatched in American literature for originality and variety.
The most witty and graceful of the trifles by which Franklin made it clear that, had he been primarily a man of letters, none of his contemporaries could have surpassed him.
Better known for his ‘Journal,’ Woolman may also be studied in his minor writings as the gentle but persuasive advocate of many good causes.
Idyllic presentations of American rural life in the later eighteenth century.
Irving was also a writer of history, biography, fiction, and travels, but his method in all forms was essentially that of the essayist who has power to enrich and heighten whatever he touches.
Paulding is a lesser Irving and has not survived as has his master, but he still repays reading for his high spirits and gift at description.
Strong and honest work by a virtuous man.
Willis was one of the most vivacious of early American essayists.
As with Irving, some of Hawthorne’s tales are really essays, and though not so profound as his stories, are often rich and noble and always in a superb style.
Lacking a systematic mind, Emerson chose to cast his philosophy in the form of brief essays which reach perhaps the very highest mark in American literature. The first and second series of essays contain all his most characteristic doctrines, which are applied in such books as ‘Representative Men’ and ‘English Traits,’ but not greatly modified. The essays which are indispensable to a clear understanding of him are: ‘Self-Reliance,’ ‘Compensation,’ ‘The Over-Soul.’
The first woman to win great distinction in American literature, Margaret Fuller was learned, original, and acute.
Three essays, written at the end of Poe’s career, in which he indicated the principles by which he had become superior in precision and disinterestedness to any literary critic of his time in the United States. The collected volumes of his criticism are also full of interest.
Once held the chief literary critic in America, and still esteemed for sound and discriminating work.
In these volumes, all based upon his Journal, Thoreau established the tradition of “nature books” in which he has not yet been equalled for pungency and depth.
The mild and tender sentiment of the first two gave them a wide popularity; the later books, more full of reality and learning, now seem less antiquated.
After matching Mitchell for sentiment, Curtis, who had naturally more wit, produced a large body of varied and delightful work for the ‘Editor’s Easy Chair’ in ‘Harper’s Magazine.’
For urbanity, variety, fancy, gayety, and wit, Holmes stands alone among American essayists.
No other American essayist has been equal to Lowell in his combination of learning, wit, and spirit. Particularly readable essays are: My Garden Acquaintance; On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners; Abraham Lincoln; Emerson, the Lecturer; Chaucer; Cambridge Thirty Years Ago; Democracy.
Though written late, these books only recapitulated ideas which had made Alcott, forty years before, one of the most original and influential of the Transcendentalists.
Pleasing reminiscences of the great days of New England written during its decline.
Practically the most versatile and prolific American author of his day, Taylor now seems to have been best in his travel essays, which are spirited and picturesque.
The most notable prose written by a poet of great and growing influence. His essays—unconventional, and often shapeless—explain the methods and intentions of his verse as nothing else can.
One of the most voluminous of the essayists who began their work at the close of the Civil War; always easy and natural.
Representative and perhaps best books of the chief among the many writers on external nature who have followed Thoreau.
A writer on poetry of classic fame and merit.
Of high rank as a writer of travel sketches, Henry James takes still higher rank for his literary criticism, which is subtle and penetrating.
An essayist of great range of topic, but particularly notable for his contributions to the literature of the theatre.
The successor of George William Curtis in ‘The Editor’s Easy Chair’ of Harper’s Magazine, and for half a century an essayist unsurpassed in America for finish, grace, and variety.
Sound and winning essays by a superb classical scholar.
Essays notable for their poetical quality.
Sprightly and sensible essays on many matters.
On the whole the most deliberate, solidly based, scrupulous, penetrating, and rigorous criticism yet produced in America.
A contemporary of Burroughs and most nearly his peer among nature writers.
Interesting essays by a most interesting American.
The briefer essays of a brilliant thinker.
Austere and thoughtful essays by the American who has come nearest to making literary criticism his entire profession.
The student’s attention is called to Dorothy Brewster’s ‘Early Twentieth-Century Essays’ and to the following critical essays which American writers have contributed to the L‘W. M. Thackeray’ ‘H. D. Thoreau’ ‘Walt Whitman’ ‘Edward Fitzgerald’ ‘Goncharov’ ‘Omar Khayyam’ ‘Giovanni Verga’ ‘Thomas Jefferson’ ‘U. S. Grant’ ‘John Keats’ ‘George Borrow’ ‘Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton’ ‘J. F. Cooper’ ‘Epictetus’ ‘Joseph Joubert’ ‘Jeremy Taylor’ ‘Tolstoy’ ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne’ ‘J. R. Lowell’ ‘Ivan Turgenev’ ‘M. J. Cawein’ ‘John Masefield’ ‘W. V. Moody’ ‘Emile Verhaeren’ ‘Joseph Addison’ ‘Abraham Lincoln’ ‘C. D. Warner’ ‘Beaumarchais’ ‘Mark Twain’ ‘Molière’ ‘Theodore Roosevelt’ ‘R. D. Sheridan’ ‘Linnaeus’ ‘A. H. Clough’ ‘Dante’ ‘Anatole France’ ‘Empedocles’ ‘Immanuel Kant’ ‘Baruch Spinoza’ ‘Cervantes’ ‘Daniel Webster’ ‘Austin Dobson’ ‘Friedrich Fröbel’ ‘Alfred Tennyson’ ‘Izaak Walton’ ‘Lord Byron’ ‘Ben Jonson’ ‘Thomas Wharton’ ‘Matthew Arnold’ ‘S. T. Coleridge’ ‘P. B. Shelley’
The book with which American historical writing may be said to begin. Another interesting book by Smith is ‘The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles.’ 1624.
An honest and truthful history of the Pilgrims by their second governor.
Really a journal kept during these years by the famous governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a learned, devout, and high-minded man.
One of the most curious of American books, and a strange revelation of the character of the less-enlightened Puritans.
An immense collection, jumbled and uncritical, of facts regarding the first century of life in New England.
A genial and humane book by a Virginia planter.
All things considered, learning, style, temper, the most distinguished historical work produced in the colonies.
A book which is less important for its history than for its humor, but which deserves to be mentioned because it furthered the study of colonial history. It is one of the most entertaining of American books. Irving wrote a charming chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, 1829, and a book dealing with the Far West, ‘Astoria,’ 1836, which is one of the earliest historical works to reveal the romance of Western exploration and settlement.
One of the most famous and popular of American histories, but now somewhat outlived, in spite of its great vigor and learning, because of its rhetorical language and its violent Americanism.
Picturesque, splendid, well-ordered accounts of great events narrated in a style of dignity and grace.
Books of distinction on a local theme.
One of the few histories of literature still a classic after more than half a century.
With Prescott and Motley, Parkman may be called one of the greatest American historians. His knowledge is singularly exhaustive, his style vivid and rich, and his insight great. His books taken together contain a complete record of the struggle between France and England for North America, but he thought of his work as a “history of the American forest.” Parkman’s position among American historians is as high as that of Cooper among American romancers.
Learned, brilliant, and dramatic histories of a phase of European history to which Motley was particularly drawn because of his sympathy with republican government.
An important history of one section of the United States, but generally criticised for its defense of all Puritans.
Vigorous records of certain adventurous chapters in American history.
A study of social conditions between the Revolution and the Civil War which surpasses any other work of the kind ever written in America.
A work of immense learning, edited by Justin Winsor, but written by many specialists.
Notable contributions to church history made by a scholar of international repute.
The most brilliant study yet produced of a brief period of American history.
The most considerable works of a pre-eminent historian of naval affairs.
Historical essays of marked orginality, notable for their attacks upon the “filio-pietistic” school, as Adams called those New England historians who have too strongly defended the excesses of Puritan zeal.
Particularly clear and readable histories.
Sound and readable works on the history of France in the eighteenth century.
Most famous and moving of the narratives of captivity among the Indians.
Colloquial, genial, the chief authority for the private life of colonial New England.
The greatest American autobiography.
The modest revelation of an eighteenth-century mystic and philanthropist.
Valuable as a record of the domestic life of a period usually studied for its public events.
As history, Weems’s books are fantastic, but they were enormously popular from the first and established a legend for each subject they dealt with.
The earliest authoritative biography of Washington, a weighty and thoughtful work.
A popular and influential though uncritical book.
Biographies now partly superseded as to facts but still notable for charm and felicity.
Perhaps the best book by a typical American frontiersman.
Twenty-five volumes dealing with the most eminent early Americans in the best biographical manner of the time.
An incomparably true and spirited narrative of a real voyage.
The life of a gifted negro who became a famous anti-slavery orator.
The standard biography of a perennially engaging thinker and statesman.
Sound and able books by a practiced biographer.
Immensely valuable to the student of affairs at Washington during the Civil War.
A delightful account of a scholar and man of the world.
Subtle criticism and penetrating and revealing autobiography by a most accomplished literary artist.
One of the best critical biographies of an American author.
In part fiction, this book still contains enough fact to be called the classic account of the days when the Mississippi River was a picturesque highway.
The most important American military memoir.
A classic of the stage.
The indispensable source of knowledge regarding Lincoln and his times. An abridged edition was published in 1902.
An admirable life of one of the chief American actors.
Particularly varied and brilliant letters, in which Lowell appears to great advantage.
A singularly rich volume of literary reminiscences.
A homely epic of the “melting pot.”
The life of the greatest leader of the African race in the United States.
An amazing record of difficulties overcome.
The most minute biographical record—it is finally to extend to eight volumes—of an American.
Equally notable for biography and criticism.
A fascinating life of one of the most picturesque of Americans. It ranks with the chief literary biographies in the English language.
A brilliant book by one of the most active Americans.
Among the most informed and interesting of American biographies.
Sprightly account of travel in 1704.
One of the raciest of early American books; by a highly cultivated man.
A readable, though not reliable, book by an early traveler in the West.
One of the most famous of Southern books.
The most influential expedition ever undertaken by Americans.
A remarkable survey of these sections during the years 1796–1815.
A suave and mellow narrative of frontier adventure.
Particularly spirited letters regarding the Michigan frontier.
Vigorous and picturesque.
One of the unquestioned classics of American travel.
Shrewd observations by a thoughtful lover of nature.
Invaluable for their descriptions of conditions in the Slave States on the eve of the Civil War.
Emerson at his most concrete.
A great romancer with his eye on passing scenes.
For grace and urbanity matched in American literature only by Irving’s books of travel.
A brilliant book by a brilliant geologist.
Incomparably subtle analyses of a traveler’s impressions.
Truthful and thoughtful.
Thrilling narratives of remarkable adventures.
Peary was the first man to reach the Pole.
Books of beauty and charm and novelty.
The permanent speculative work of the greatest American theologian.
A notable instance of early American idealism.
Woolman’s essays and his Journal make up an important body of mysticism.
Rational opposition to the Puritans by a self-taught philosopher.
Jefferson wrote no considerable speculative work, but his opinions on theological and philosophical matters may be found carefully arrayed under proper heads in The Jefferson Cyclopædia. No man represents better than Jefferson the more advanced views current during the second half of the eighteenth century.
Paine was only a naturalized American and this book was written in France, but its influence was very great in the United States from the first and it is still the source of much popular heterodoxy.
The most capable American materialist of the eighteenth century.
While Channing wrote no books and was no more systematic than Emerson, he deserves study as the chief of the Unitarian preachers who furthered Transcendentalism.
The central philosophical position of Emerson may be found in these brief treatises, but the bulk of his work is generally considered to belong to belles-lettres and may be found under the heading Essays. At the same time no one questions his rank as the greatest of the Transcendentalists.
Parker was the best scholar and the most vigorous preacher among the Transcendentalists.
Beecher was the most effective popular preacher in America during the nineteenth century.
As a very famous college president, Hopkins had a strong influence.
The chief popular exponent of evolution in America, and a man of remarkable lucidity.
Discourses by the most eloquent American preacher since the Civil War.
Essays which may properly be called the starting point of pragmatism.
The chief modern American idealist and a writer of poetic insight and noble literary form.
The chief American psychologist, the accepted head of the pragmatic movement, and a writer of rare spirit and humanity.
James’s successor as leader of American pragmatists, and a thinker of originality, especially in social and educational affairs.
The graceful speculations of the most skilful literary artist among recent American philosophers.
The first note, bold and stern, in the chorus of Revolutionary oratory.
This famous dialogue, one of the great pamphlets of the eighteenth century, offers a concise description of the colonies such as can be found nowhere else.
Perhaps the best statement of the early position of the colonies.
The famous “liberty or death” speech.
Perhaps the most effective words ever written in America.
First Inaugural Address. 1801.
The gospel of Jeffersonian democracy.
An Englishman by birth, Paine was not surpassed by any American writer of the Revolution for his immediate practical influence on public opinion.
The most famous exposition of the American constitution.
A summary of almost all the Revolutionists had stood for and their noblest testament to posterity.
Two of the notable speeches of a man famed above all Americans for the virulence of his oratory.
One of the most immediately effective of American orators, but not profound or reasonable enough to convince a later generation as he convinced his own.
The most splendid of American orators. Though he lacked humor and seems often inflexible, he was an orator of singular range—almost equally able at the bar, in the Senate, and on public occasions. With Clay and Calhoun he makes up a group of three men not to be matched elsewhere in the history of American public life.
The message in which was promulgated the Monroe Doctrine.
Webster’s speech on the same resolution is commonly known as his reply to Hayne, his opponent. The Webster-Hayne debate is the most famous in American political oratory.
The great spokesman of states’ rights, a scholar, and a master of logical argument.
The “trumpet of the Abolitionists,” made eloquent by ethical enthusiasm and warm sympathies.
Among practical politicians in his generation, Sumner was hardly equalled for his moral fervor.
An orator of great culture and effectiveness, who practically created the Civil Service by his eloquent arguments.
Lincoln not only summed up and led the best thought of his day, but by his candor and simplicity of language—not equalled by that of any other American public man—he set new standards in oratory and made the older rhetorical manner seem archaic and unnecessary.
Perhaps the greatest German-American, one of the greatest independents in American politics, Schurz was an orator of peculiar fire and conviction.
Sincere and dignified speeches.
A tireless defender of slavery and states’ rights, Stephens has been called “the sincerest and frankest public man in the Confederacy.”
The speeches, delivered in England, by which Beecher did much to explain to the English the true aims of the Union cause during the Civil War.
Perhaps the most versatile American man of letters, Lowell was not much below his best as a writer upon contemporary political affairs and as a public speaker.
Striking, impassioned speeches by one of the most gifted Southern statesmen since the Civil War.
The inventor of the term “single tax” and an influential exponent of the right of all men to the use of the earth.
Practically a survey of American political issues for twenty years following the Civil War by a brilliant actor in the events.
One of the most effective writers of all those who have sought to reconcile North and South.
Conspicuous examples of the energetic political philosophy of the beginning of the twentieth century by its chief spokesman.
A high-minded, invaluable statement of American ideals during a time of unprecedented stress and danger.
Three collections of much influence in their time, though many of the authors included are now forgotten.
Indispensable for reference.
Well-chosen extracts from the chief American prose writers, with particularly valuable essays upon them by various critics.
An anthology intended to accompany the same writer’s ‘Poets of America,’ and, like it, a classic.
These volumes have probably done more than any others to encourage the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American authors.
Each of these three volumes is the best discussion of its subject yet produced, and the selections are excellent.
Selections from recent poets, with biographical and critical matter not easily to be found elsewhere.
A Little Book of Modern American Verse. 1913.
An attractive anthology of verse written for the most part since 1900.
A valuable collection of poems arranged in the order of the events they celebrate. It supersedes all previous collections of a similar sort.
An elaborate and inclusive work, liberal in its critical judgments and abundant in its selections. Volume XV. contains a Biographical Dictionary of Southern Authors compiled by L. L. Knight.
A valuable anthology of English and American poets of the twentieth century.
For the period covered, this work has no equal though much of the criticism now seems somewhat easy-going. The information is extensive, and the selections well chosen.
A standard and invaluable work on a larger scale than the preceding. Besides minute biographical and bibliographical facts, it gives also a digest of critical opinion regarding the more important authors dealt with.
A classic of American criticism.
These four volumes contain the best treatment of colonial and Revolutionary literature, and make up the most important work ever written upon a special period of American literary history.
The most considerable study of American Literature by a British author. It is based upon the article written by Professor Nichol for the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Btitannica.
A weighty, thoroughgoing book, chiefly concerned with the established American classics.
No text, but indispensable for dates.
A useful book for reference, with succinct notices of more than seven thousand authors.
Singularly charming sketches by a graceful essayist and antiquarian.
A masterly book, though preoccupied with New England and disposed to be condescending.
Accurate, witty, just; the best brief history of American Literature.
Accounts written with great distinction by an eminent poet and critic primarily concerned with the artistic merit of the works discussed.
One of the most searching volumes of literary criticism ever written in America. It contains studies of Cooper, Hawthorne, Emerson, Poe, Lowell, and Henry James.
The editor had the collaboration of various members of the faculty of Cornell University, and produced a bulky manual which is full of accurate knowledge and sound judgment.
Admirable essays on the chief American men of letters.
A solid and catholic treatment, notable for its lack of sectional bias.
The best account of recent American literature, vigorous and unacademic, but with an excessive partiality for nationalism in literature.
The most ambitious history of American literature yet undertaken. Like The Cambridge History of English Literature, it is made up of chapters written by specialists for general readers, and leaves practically no province of literature untouched. Volume 1 appeared in 1917.