American literary masters

BY LEON H. VINCENT
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT 1906 BY LEON H. VINCENT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published March 1906
TO GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
The nineteen men of letters whose work is reviewed in this volume represent an important half-century of our national literary life. The starting-point is the year 1809, the date of “A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker.” No author is included whose reputation does not rest, in part, on some notable book published before 1860.
Readers of modern French criticism will not need to be told that the plan of dividing the studies into short sections was taken from Faguet’s admirable “Dix-Septième Siècle.”
I am indebted for many helpful criticisms to Mr. James R. Joy, to Miss Mary Charlotte Priest, and especially to Mr. Lindsay Swift of the Boston Public Library.
L. H. V.
January 23, 1906.
W. C. Bryant : A Discourse on the Life, Character, and Genius of Washington Irving , 1860.
Pierre M. Irving : The Life and Letters of Washington Irving , 1862–64.