Brief History of English and American Literature

by Henry A. Beers

11. William Dean Howells. Their Wedding Journey. Suburban Sketches. A Chance Acquaintance. A Foregone Conclusion. The Undiscovered Country. A Modern Instance.

12. George W. Cable. Old Creole Days. Madam Delphine. The Grandissimes.

13. Joel Chandler Harris. Uncle Remus. Mingo and Other Sketches.

14. Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss Murfree). In the Tennessee Mountains.

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CHAPTER VIII.

THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS LITERATURE IN AMERICA.

BY JOHN FLETCHER HURST.

The important field of theology and religion in America has yielded many and rich additions to the storehouse of letters.

The Bay Psalm Book, published in Cambridge, Mass., in 1640, was the first book printed in the English colonies in America. Its leading authors were Richard Mather (1596-1669), of Dorchester, father of Increase and grandfather of the still more famous Cotton Mather, Thomas Welde and John Eliot, both of Roxbury. The book was a few years later revised by Henry Dunster and passed through as many as twenty-seven editions. While it was both printed and used in England and Scotland by dissenting churches, it was a constant companion in private and public worship in the Calvinistic churches of the Colonies.