Upon the Burning of Our House. 18. To My Dear and Loving Husband. 21.
Edward Taylor (1642-1729). 4. Huswifery. 22. Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold. 23
.
ix Contents Acknowledgements Preface
xvii xix
COLONIAL FOUNDATIONS 1 The Literature of Settlement (1607-1750) John Smith (1580-1631) from The General History of Virginia
1 5
William Bradford (1590-1657) from Of Plymouth Plantation
2 11
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) Upon the Burning of Our House To My Dear and Loving Husband
3 18 21
Edward Taylor (1642-1729) Huswifery Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold
4 22 23
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
4 25
REASON AND REVOLUTION 31 The Literature of Independence (1750-1800) Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) from The Autobiography from Poor Richard’s Almanack
32 35 46
Patrick Henry (1736-1799) Speech in the Virginia Convention
33 48
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) from Common Sense The Crisis, Number I
33 52 55
x Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) The Declaration of Independence
33 58
Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) On Being Brought from Africa to America To His Excellency, General Washington
34 64 65
COMING OF AGE 67 The Literature of Progress (1800-1840) Washington Irving (1783-1859) Rip Van Winkle The Legend of Sleepy Hollow The Devil and Tom Walker The Adventure of the German Student
68 71 92 127 141
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) Thanatopsis To a Waterfowl
68 148 151
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) A Dream Within a Dream To Helen The Raven The Bells Annabel Lee The Fall of the House of Usher The Tell-Tale Heart The Cask of Amontillado
68 153 154 155 161 165 167 189 195
SHADES OF INSIGHT 203 The Literature of Contradiction (1840-1855) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) from Nature from Self-Reliance Concord Hymn
204 207 211 213
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) from Walden from Civil Disobedience
204 214 222
xi Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) The Minister’s Black Veil Wakefield The Birthmark
205 224 240 250
Herman Melville (1819-1891) Bartleby the Scrivener
205 270
NEW ENGLAND VERSE Poetry of the Everyday (1840-1885)
313
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls A Psalm of Life
313 316 317
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) from Snowbound Hampton Beach
314 319 325
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) Old Ironsides The Chambered Nautilus
314 328 329
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) Success is Counted Sweetest Hope is the Thing with Feathers There’s a Certain Slant of Light Much Madness is Divinest Sense I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died Because I Could Not Stop for Death I Never Saw a Moor How Happy is the Little Stone
315 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338
A HOUSE DIVIDED The Literature of War (1855-1865)
339
Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895) from My Bondage and My Freedom
340 343
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) from Uncle Tom’s Cabin
340 350
xii Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) Letter to His Son—On Duty Letter to His Son—On Secession
340 365 367
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) from A House Divided The Emancipation Proclamation The Gettysburg Address Letter to Mrs. Bixby
341 369 371 374 376
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) from Song of Myself I Hear America Singing Beat! Beat! Drums! When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer A Noiseless Patient Spider O Captain! My Captain! When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
341 377 379 380 382 383 384 385
WESTWARD DRIFT 397 The Literature of Expansion (1865-1915) Mark Twain (1835-1910) The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
398
Bret Harte (1836-1902) The Outcasts of Poker Flat
398 407
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge from The Devil’s Dictionary
398 420 432
400
EMERGING VOICES 441 The Literature of Equality (1870-1930) Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) from Up from Slavery
442 444
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) from The Souls of Black Folk
442 450
xiii Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) We Wear the Mask Life’s Tragedy Sympathy
442 456 457 458
Kate Chopin (1851-1904) The Story of an Hour A Respectable Woman The Storm
442 459 463 468
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) The Yellow Wallpaper Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”
443 475 495
Willa Cather (1873-1947) A Wagner Matinée Paul’s Case
443 497 507
CRUEL TRUTHS The Literature of Fate (1880-1920)
531
Hamlin Garland (1860-1940) Under the Lion’s Paw
531 533
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War is Kind A Man Said to the Universe The Open Boat
532 550 552 553
Jack London (1876-1916) To Build a Fire
532 582
MODERN MUSINGS 601 The Literature of Uncertainty (1900-1940) Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) Luke Havergal Cliff Klingenhagen Richard Cory Miniver Cheevy
601 605 607 608 609
xiv Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) Trainor the Druggist Doc Hill Abel Melveny Lucinda Matlock
602 611 612 613 614
Robert Frost (1874-1963) After Apple-Picking Mending Wall Birches Out, Out— The Road Not Taken
602 615 617 619 622 624
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) Chicago Grass
603 625 627
Ezra Pound (1885-1972) In a Station of the Metro The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
603 628 629
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
