INTRODUCTION. MEN of the English race have occupied what is now the United States of America for nearly three centuries. In that time, aided by men of other races, they have done an immense and splendid work. They have increased from a few thousands to seventy millions; subdued and settled a wilderness stretching from ocean to ocean; established the greatest Republic in the world's history; fought two great wars, one for national independence and one for national unity and the liberation of the slave; developed a magnificent material civilization; covered a continent with churches, schools, and colleges; and made respectable beginnings in literature and the fine arts. Of this manifold activity the literary side only will be the subject of special study in the following pages. But it should be remembered that a nation's literature is closely related to the other sides of the national life and cannot be fully understood apart. For the first two centuries, indeed, our literature is chiefly valuable, not as art, but as history, as an expression of the spirit of the people and the times. Nor can its full significance be seen until we widen our view still more and recognize that American literature is one branch of the greater English literature, a part of the life of a great race as well as of a great nation. The history of American literature will, therefore, here be divided into periods corresponding to the great periods of American history: I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD, 1607-1765. II. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD, 1765-1789. III. THE PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC, 1789-1900. In the first two periods the purely literary aspects of the subject-matter will, for the reason already mentioned, receive less attention; in the last period the literature will be studied chiefly for its own sake, although its historical and social relations must not be forgotten; and from first to last there will be frequent occasion to note the influence exerted upon American writers by those of England and the other countries of Europe. |