A History of American Literature Since 1870

In this book the author has divided the literary history of the century into three periods denominating them as the Knickerbocker Period the New England Period and the National Period and we have made the last to begin shortly after the close of the Civil War with those new forces and new ideals and broadened views that grew out of that mighty struggle. The field is a new one: no other book and no chapter of a book has ever attempted to handle it as a unit. The author has given in his preface as—It is an important one: it is our first really national period all-American autochthonic. In the study of this new national period only those authors who did their first distinctive work before 1892 have been considered.