Initial Studies in American Letters

Initial Studies in American
Letters

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Henry A. Beers
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Title: Initial Studies in American Letters
Author: Henry A. Beers
Release Date: May 18, 2005 [eBook #15854]
Language: English
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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INITIAL
STUDIES IN AMERICAN LETTERS***
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INITIAL STUDIES IN AMERICAN LETTERS
by
HENRY A. BEERS
New York Chautauqua Press C. L. S. C. Department, 150 Fifth Avenue
1891

The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a Council of
Six. It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not
involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every
principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended.

PREFACE.

This volume is intended as a companion to the historical sketch of
English literature, entitled From Chaucer to Tennyson, published last
year for the Chautauqua Circle. In writing it I have followed the same
plan, aiming to present the subject in a sort of continuous essay rather
than in the form of a "primer" or elementary manual. I have not
undertaken to describe, or even to mention, every American author or
book of importance, but only those which seemed to me of most
significance. Nevertheless I believe that the sketch contains enough
detail to make it of some use as a guide-book to our literature. Though
meant to be mainly a history of American _belles-lettres_, it makes
some mention of historical and political writings, but hardly any of
philosophical, scientific, and technical works.
A chronological rather than a topical order has been followed, although
the fact that our best literature is of recent growth has made it
impossible to adhere as closely to a chronological plan as in the English
sketch. In the reading courses appended to the different chapters I have
named a few of the most important authorities in American literary
history, such as Duyckinck, Tyler, Stedman, and Richardson. My
thanks are due to the authors and publishers who have kindly allowed
me the use of copyrighted matter for the appendix, especially to Mr.
Park Godwin and Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. for the passages from
Bryant; to Messrs. A. O. Armstrong & Son for the selections from Poe;
to the Rev. E. E. Hale and Messrs. Roberts Brothers for the extract
from _The Man Without a Country_; to Walt Whitman for his two
poems; and to Mr. Clemens and the American Publishing Co. for the
passage from The Jumping Frog.
HENRY A. BEERS.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD, 1607-1765

CHAPTER II.

THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD, 1765-1815

CHAPTER III.
THE ERA OF NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1837

CHAPTER IV.
THE CONCORD WRITERS, 1837-1861

CHAPTER V.
THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS, 1837-1861

CHAPTER VI.
LITERATURE IN THE CITIES, 1837-1861

CHAPTER VII.
LITERATURE SINCE 1861
APPENDIX.

INITIAL STUDIES IN AMERICAN LETTERS.

CHAPTER I.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
1607-1765.
The writings of our colonial era have a much greater importance as
history than as literature. It would be unfair to judge of the intellectual
vigor of the English colonists in America by the books that they wrote;
those "stern men with empires in their brains" had more pressing work
to do than the making of books. The first settlers, indeed, were brought

face to face with strange and exciting conditions--the sea, the
wilderness, the Indians, the flora and fauna of a new world--things
which seem stimulating to the imagination, and incidents and
experiences which might have lent themselves easily to poetry or
romance. Of all these they wrote back to England reports which were
faithful and sometimes vivid, but which, upon the whole, hardly rise
into the region of literature. "New England," said Hawthorne, "was
then in a state incomparably more picturesque than at present." But to a
contemporary that old New England of the seventeenth century
doubtless seemed any thing but picturesque, filled with grim, hard,
work-day realities. The planters both of Virginia and Massachusetts
were decimated by sickness and starvation, constantly threatened by
Indian Wars, and troubled by quarrels among themselves and fears of
disturbance from England. The wrangles between the royal governors
and the House of Burgesses in the Old Dominion, and the theological
squabbles in New England, which fill our colonial records, are petty
and wearisome to read of. At least, they would be so did we not bear in
mind to what imperial destinies those conflicts were slowly educating
the little communities which had hardly yet secured a