Great American Writers

Text extracted from opening pages of book: GREAT AMERICAN WRITERS BY W. P. TRENT OF INGUSH LTTMATUK, COLUMBIA AND JOHN ERSKINE AMOCZATZ riOriSSOft Of rNGLHH, COLUMBIA NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY LONDON WILLIAMS AND NORGATE CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I FRANKLIN, BBOCKDEN BROWN, AND IRVING . . 7 II WILLIAM CULLEK BRYANT 97 III JAMES FENIMORE COOPER ........ 38 IV NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE . . 57 V EDGAR ALLAN POE 85 VI THE TRANSCENDENTALISM .108 VII THE NEW ENGLAND POETS 134 VIII THE HISTORIANS 169 IX WEBSTER AND LlNCOLN 187 X HARRIET BEECHER STOWE . 197 XI WALT WHITMAN 212 XII BEET HARTE AND MARX TWAIN 231 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............ 51 INDEX . ... $ 58 GEEAT AMERICAN WRITERS CHAPTER I FRANKLIN, BROCKDEN BROWN, AND IRVING AMERICAN literature in the most liberal sense of the term is now a little more than three hundred years old. In the strictest sense comprising only the books that are still somewhat widely read, it is not half so old. Historians may discuss and students may read or skim a few poets and historians and theo logians; Crevecoeur's Letters of an American Farmer and John Woolman's Journal de servedly win an admirer here and there; a handful of people know that no American and few men anywhere ever possessed a more powerful mind than that of Jonathan Ed wards; but practically only one book written by an American before the close of the eight eenth century has sufficient excellence and popularity to rank as a classic. Oddly enough, this book, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, was first read in an imperfect French version, won much of its fame in a somewhat emasculated English form, and 7 8 GREAT AMERICAN WRITERS was not known in its native raciness until 1868. Its author, although hiswritings fill ten volumes, was far enough from being a professional writer; but his is the first name with which a popular account of the achieve ments of American men of letters need begin. In the one hundred and twenty-two years that have elapsed since his death the volume of American literature has increased in at least equal proportion with the growth of the country in population and wealth and power, yet among the thousands of authors whose works constitute this literature there is no more interesting and versatile and humane personality than his. The best element in their work, as in his, is a certain citizen note/' a certain adaptability to the intellec tual, moral, and esthetic needs of a large de mocracy. When this is said, one perceives how it is that one may also say that America has no more produced an author of the range and quality of Dry den than she has produced one of the range and quality of Milton or Franklin's life is too well known, too inti mately connected with the history of Ms country and his age, to require extended treatment here. We think of him primarily ms * Philadelphian, but his birth at Boston on January IT, 1706 connects him with, that New FRANKLIN, BROWN, AND IRVING England which, whether under the domina tion of the Congregational divines, such as the Mathers, or under the leadership of Emer son and his fellow Transcendentalists, was, until the present generation, the most pro ductive and important literary section of the country. In his shrewdness and his practi cality he was worthy of his Puritan birth; not so in his lack of spirituality and his thor ough this-worldliness. Perhaps, however, a poetic imagination and a deep religious sense would havemade a Franklin of whom the world would have stood in little need a Franklin far from being the true child of his utilitarian century and the first exponent, on a broad scale, of the spirit of American nation* ality. He read both Bunyan and Defoe in his youth, but it was the author of the Essay upon Projects that chiefly impressed him. He read Addison also, and imitated him in early essays. With such masters and his own na tive genius, it is not surprising that, given the many occasions he had for putting his pen to use, he should have become the best of our early p