History of American Literature | Page 2

first author
read for pure pleasure? The answer is that the student would not then
comprehend the stages of growth of the new world ideals, that he
would not view our later literature through the proper atmosphere, and
that he would lack certain elements necessary for a sympathetic
comprehension of the subject.
The seven years employed in the preparation of this work would have
been insufficient, had not the author been assisted by his wife, to whom
he is indebted not only for invaluable criticism but also for the direct
authorship of some of the best matter in this book.

R. P. H.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
COLONIAL LITERATURE

CHAPTER II
THE EMERGENCE OF A NATION

CHAPTER III
THE NEW YORK GROUP

CHAPTER IV
THE NEW ENGLAND GROUP

CHAPTER V
SOUTHERN LITERATURE

CHAPTER VI
WESTERN LITERATURE

CHAPTER VII
THE EASTERN REALISTS A GLANCE BACKWARD
* * * * *
SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF AUTHORS AND THEIR CHIEF
WORKS
INDEX
[Transcriber's note: Index not included in this electronic version.]

HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

CHAPTER I
COLONIAL LITERATURE
RELATION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE.--The literature produced
in that part of America known as the United States did not begin as an
independent literature. The early colonists were Englishmen who
brought with them their own language, books, and modes of thought.
England had a world-famous literature before her sons established a
permanent settlement across the Atlantic. Shakespeare had died four
years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. When an American goes
to Paris he can neither read the books, nor converse with the citizens, if
he knows no language but his own. Let him cross to London, and he
will find that, although more than three hundred years have elapsed
since the first colonists came to America, he immediately feels at home,
so far as the language and literature are concerned.
For nearly two hundred years after the first English settlements in
America, the majority of the works read there were written by English
authors. The hard struggle necessary to obtain a foothold in a
wilderness is not favorable to the early development of a literature.
Those who remained in England could not clear away the forest, till the
soil, and conquer the Indians, but they could write the books and send
them across the ocean. The early settlers were for the most part content
to allow English authors to do this. For these reasons it would be
surprising if early American literature could vie with that produced in
England during the same period.
When Americans began to write in larger numbers, there was at first
close adherence to English models. For a while it seemed as if
American literature would be only a feeble imitation of these models,
but a change finally came, as will be shown in later chapters. It is to be
hoped, however, that American writers of the future will never cease to
learn from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan, and

Wordsworth.
AMERICAN LITERATURE AN IMPORTANT STUDY.--We should
not begin the study of American literature in an apologetic spirit. There
should be no attempt to minimize the debt that America owes to
English literature, nor to conceal the fact that American literature is
young and has not had time to produce as many masterpieces as
England gave to the world during a thousand years. However, it is now
time also to record the fact that the literature of England gained
something from America. Cultivated Englishmen to-day willingly
admit that without a study of Cooper, Poe, and Hawthorne no one could
give an adequate account of the landmarks of achievement in fiction,
written in our common tongue. French critics have even gone so far as
to canonize Poe. In a certain field he and Hawthorne occupy a unique
place in the world's achievement. Again, men like Bret Harte and Mark
Twain are not common in any literature. Foreigners have had American
books translated into all the leading languages of the world. It is now
more than one hundred years since Franklin, the great American
philosopher of the practical, died, and yet several European nations
reprint nearly every year some of his sayings, which continue to
influence the masses. English critics, like John Addington Symonds,
Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edward Dowden, have testified to the
power of the democratic element in our literature and have given the
dictum that it cannot be neglected.
Some of the reasons why American literature developed along original
lines and thus conveyed a message of its own to the world are to be
found in the changed environment and the varying problems and ideals
of American life. Even more important than the changed ways of
earning a living and the difference in climate, animals, and scenery
were the struggles leading to the Revolutionary War,