in editorial work on magazines and annuals at Philadelphia, and during his later years he occupied himself with the compilation of geographical and historical works which he left unfinished at his death in 1810. He had long been a sufferer from consumption, and in the later years his creative powers seem to have been largely sapped by the disease. While he was not a great writer, he was our first notable novelist, a forerunner of Cooper, Poe, and Hawthorne. He deserves to be remembered also as our first purely professional author. His romances are still read to some extent by the general reader, and his work has been generously praised by his early biographers, William Dunlap and W. H. Prescott, and by the later historians of our literature. After Franklin, who must be accorded first place on account of his immortal Autobiography, we may place the novelist Charles Brockden Brown beside the poet Philip Freneau, as one of the two most important purely literary figures in the first two centuries of our history. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES SUITABLE FOR HIGH-SCHOOL LIBRARIES AND OUTSIDE READING Special Reference Books for Revolutionary Literature1 1. History of Literature and Selections *TYLER, Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783; 2 vols., Putnam, N. Y., 1897. PATTERSON, The Spirit of the American Revolution as Revealed in the Poetry of the Period, a Study of American Patriotic Verse from 1760 to 1783; Badger, Boston, 1915. LOSHE, The Early American Novel; Lemcke & Buechner, N. Y., 1908. *CAIRNS, Selections from Early American Writers, 1607-1800. (See p. 41.) DUYCKINCK, Cyclopaedia of American Literature. (See p. 41.) *STEDMAN and HUTCHINSON, Library of American Literature, Vols. III and IV. 1 The important works of authors treated in the body of the text are not listed here. *QUINN, Representative American Plays; Century, N. Y., 1917. (The first three plays are from the Colonial and Revolutionary Period.) *MOSES, Representative Plays by American Dramatists, 3 vols., Dutton, N. Y., 1918. *The American Dramatist; Little Brown, Boston, 1911. SEILHOMER, History of the American Theatre; 3 vols., Philadelphia, 1888-91. *STEDMAN, An American Anthology, 1787-1900; Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1900. *STEDMAN, Poets of America; Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1899. EGGLESTON, American War Ballads and Lyrics; Putnam, N. Y., 1889. *STEVENSON, Poems of American History; Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1908. MATTHEWS, Poems of American Patriotism; Scribner's, N. Y., 1898. 2. Later Poetry Dealing with Revolutionary Times LONGFELLOW, "Paul Revere's Ride." BRYANT, "Song of Marion's Men” (compare Simms's song, "The Swamp Fox," in The Partisan). READ, "The Rising." EMERSON, "Concord Hymn," "Boston Hymn.” WHITTIER, "Lexington," "Centennial Hymn." HOLMES, "Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill," "Ballad of the Boston Tea-Party," "Lexington." FINCH, "Nathan Hale." LANIER, "Psalm of the West." HAYNE, "Macdonald's Raid-1780." (See Burton E. Stevenson's Poems of American History, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1908, for fuller lists of poems dealing with the Revolutionary Period. 3. Later Fiction Dealing with Revolutionary Times COOPER, The Spy, The Pilot, Lionel Lincoln, etc. KENNEDY, Horse-Shoe Robinson, a Tale of the Tory Ascendency. SIMMS, The Partisan, a Tale of the Revolution, The Scout, Eutaw, Katherine Walton, etc. COOKE, The Virginia Comedians, Henry St. John. THOMPSON, Green Mountain Boys, The Rangers. COFFIN, The Boys of '76. BUTTERWORTH, The Patriot Schoolmaster. EGGLESTON, A Carolina Cavalier. THACKERAY, The Virginians. CRADDOCK, The Story of Old Fort Loudon. FORD, Janice Meredith. JEWETT, The Tory Lover. ATHERTON, The Conqueror (Alexander Hamilton). ALLEN, The Choir Invisible. CHURCHILL, Richard Carvel. MITCHELL, Hugh Wynne, The Red City. FREDERIC, In the Valley. HENTY, True to the Old Flag. STEVENSON, B. G., A Soldier of Virginia. 4. Essays and Historical Works Dealing with the Revolutionary Times FISKE, American Revolution; also, for young readers, The War of Independence. HART, Formation of the Union, Camp and Fireside of the Revolution. EARLE, Stage Coach and Tavern Days. JENKS, When America Won Liberty. American Statesmen Series (including biographies of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Henry, Madison, etc.). III. ARTISTIC OR CREATIVE PERIOD 1800-1900 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT General summary of the two preceding periods. Glancing back over the whole course of our literature up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, we observe that the earliest American writings were produced by the Southern Colonies with Virginia as the center and Captain John Smith and Colonel William Byrd as the chief representatives of what we may term the Cavalier chroniclers; that the primacy of literary production of the theological type belongs to the New England Colonies with Boston and its environs as the chief center and the Reverend Cotton Mather and the Reverend Jonathan Edwards as the chief literary exponents of the Calvinistic theology of our Puritan forefathers. Then during the later struggle between the French and the English colonies and between the English colonies and the mother country, the Middle Colonies with Philadelphia as the chief city became the principal center of the controversial literature of the period, with orators and pamphleteers and publicists, such as Otis and Henry, Thomas Paine and John Dickinson, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as typical figures, and with the beginnings of a more personal and permanent type of literature in the Autobiography of Franklin, the nature poetry of Philip Freneau, and the novels of Charles Brockden Brown. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century we must note the shift of the center of commercial and literary activities to the growing metropolis of New York City, where Washington Irving and his associates founded what has later become known as the Knickerbocker School. The four divisions of the nineteenth century. In a brief survey of the artistic and creative literature of the nineteenth century in America, we shall find that several distinct schools or movements are to be recorded, but these schools or movements have revolved pretty definitely around the Middle Atlantic States including New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, with New York City as the center; New England with Boston and its environs as the center; the more distinctly local or regional literary expression in the South, as illustrated in the distinct school at Charleston, South Carolina; and the Central and Far West coming forward in the last quarter of the century as the section in which the most uniformly democratic and purely national literary expression has taken rise. Hence we may readily and conveniently group our chief authors under four general regional divisions, and at the same time preserve the general integrity of the various schools and distinct movements and also the general chronological order— namely: (1) The New York and Middle Atlantic States Group; (2) The New England Group; (3) The Southern Group; and (4) The Central and Far Western Group. The main purpose of the following sections will be to give a rapid survey of the writers of these groups, with some analysis of the distinct movements and general influences and tendencies in each. I. THE NEW YORK AND MIDDLE ATLANTIC STATES GROUP THE MAJOR WRITERS Classification of the writers. Washington Irving, the genial storyteller, essayist, biographer, and historian, is the leader of the New York or Knickerbocker School. With him are grouped the three other major writers: James Fenimore Cooper, the romancer, who was born in New Jersey but lived from his infancy in New York and was intimately |