Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

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PART [1.] Great Poets of America [2.] Our Most Noted Novelists [3.] Famous Women Novelists [4.] Representative Women Poets of America [5.] Well-known Essayists, Critics and Sketch Writers [6.] Great American Historians and Biographers [7.] Our National Humorists [8.] Popular Writers for Young People [9.] Noted Journalists and Magazine Contributors [10.] Great Orators and Popular Lecturers [11.] Famous Women Orators and Reformers [12.] Miscellaneous Masterpieces and Choice Gems

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Our obligation to the following publishers is respectfully and gratefully acknowledged, since, without the courtesies and assistance of these publishers and a number of the living authors, it would have been impossible to issue this volume.

Copyright selections from the following authors are used by the permission of and special arrangement with MESSRS. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., their authorized publishers:—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry W. Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor, Maurice Thompson, Colonel John Hay, Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, Edward Bellamy, Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss Murfree), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward), Octave Thanet (Miss French), Alice Cary, Phœbe Cary, Charles Dudley Warner, E. C. Stedman, James Parton, John Fiske and Sarah Jane Lippincott.

TO THE CENTURY CO., we are indebted for selections from Richard Watson Gilder, James Whitcomb Riley and Francis Richard Stockton.

TO CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, for extracts from Eugene Field.

TO HARPER & BROTHERS, for selections from Will Carleton, General Lew Wallace, W. D. Howells, Thomas Nelson Page, John L. Motley, Charles Follen Adams and Lyman Abbott.

TO ROBERTS BROTHERS, for selections from Edward Everett Hale, Helen Hunt Jackson, Louise Chandler Moulton and Louisa M. Alcott.

TO ORANGE, JUDD & CO., for extracts from Edward Eggleston.

TO DODD, MEAD & CO., for selections from E. P. Roe, Marion Harland (Mrs. Terhune), Amelia E. Barr and Martha Finley.