History of American Literature

by Reuben Post Halleck

CHAPTER VI WESTERN LITERATURE

CHAPTER VII THE EASTERN REALISTS A GLANCE BACKWARD

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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.