A Manual of American Literature

This book has been prepared for publication as No. 4000 a Memorial Volume of the Tauchnitz Edition. Perhaps it may be well to explain to American readers what the Tauchnitz Edition is and what a Memorial Volume is in this collection. The Collection of British Authors or as it is more popularly known on the European Continent the Tauchnitz Edition was instituted in 1841 at Leipsic by one of the most distinguished of German publishers the late Baron Bernhard Tauchnitz whose son is now at the head of the house. The father records that he was incited to the undertaking by the high opinion and enthusiastic fondness which I have ever entertained for English literature: a literature springing from the selfsame root as the literature of Germany and cultivated in the beginning by the same Saxon race.... As a German-Saxon it gave me particular pleasure to promote the literary interest of my Anglo-Saxon cousins by rendering English literature as universally known as possible beyond the limits of the British Empire. In another place Baron Tauchnitz describes the mission of his Collection to be the spreading and strengthening the love for English literature outside of England and her Colonies.