*Indicates a complete longer work
VOLUME ONE: BEGINNINGS TO 1865
Literature to 1750
Introduction
Comparative Timeline
America before Columbus
Map: Native American Peoples, 1492
Christianity, Islam, and the Lure of Asia
Conquest and Colonization in the New World
Map: Early European Explorations
The Protestant Reformation and the Puritan “Errand into the Wilderness”
Literature and Cultural Diversity in Colonial America
Native American Origin and Creation Stories
Introduction
Iroquois Confederacy
Origin of Folk Stories (Seneca)
A Tale of the Foundation of the Great Island, Now North America (Tuscarora)
Cherokee
How the World Was Made
Akimel O’odham (Pima)
The Story of the Creation
Lakota
Wohpe and the Gift of the Pipe
Hupa
The Boy Who Grew Up at Ta’k’imilding
| Native American Stories through a Modern Lens
| N. Scott Momaday (b. 1934)
| The Becoming of the Native: Man in America before Columbus
Explorations and Early Encounters
Introduction
Christopher Columbus (1451–1506)
Letter of Columbus, Describing the Results of His First Voyage
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490–c. 1557)
The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca
Proem and Chapters 14, 15, 16, 19–21
Samuel de Champlain (c. 1570–1635)
FROM The Voyages of Samuel de Champlain
Colonial Settlements
Introduction
Captain John Smith (1580–1631)
The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles
The Third Book, Ch. II, “What Happened till the First Supply”
| Jamestown through a Modern Lens
| Paula Gunn Allen (b. 1939)
| Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe
William Bradford (1590–1657)
Of Plimoth Plantation
[Book 1]
FROM Chapter 1
Chapter 4: Showing the reasons & ....causes of their remoovall
Chapter 9: Of their vioage, & how they passed the sea, and of their safe arrivall at Cape Codd
Chapter 10: Showing how they sought out a place of habitation, and what befell them heraboute
Booke 2
The remainder of Anno: 1620 [The Mayflower Compact; Difficult Beginnings; Early Relations with the Indians and the Peace Treaty]
FROM Anno: 1621 [The First Harvest and Thanksgiving]
FROM Anno Domini: 1632 [Prosperity Brings Dispersal of the Population and the Division of the Church at Plymouth]
| Plymouth Plantation through a Modern Lens
| Wamsutta (Frank B.) James (1923–2001)
| Suppressed Speech on the 350th Anniversary of the Pilgrims’ Landing at Plymouth Rock, September 10, 1970
John Winthrop (1588–1649)
A Modell of Christian Charity
Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612–1672)
The Prologue
In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory
An Epitaph on My Dear and Ever-Honoured Mother Mrs. Dorothy Dudley
To Her Father with Some Verses
The Flesh and the Spirit
The Author to Her Book
Before the Birth of One of Her Children
To My Dear and Loving Husband
A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment
Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House
As Weary Pilgrim
| Bradstreet through a Modern Lens
| Rose Murray
| Puritan Woman
Mary Rowlandson (1636?–1711)
*The Sovereignty and Goodness of God
Edward Taylor (c. 1642–1729)
Preparatory Meditations
Prologue
Meditation 8
Meditation 38
God’s Determinations
The Preface
The Joy of Church Fellowship Rightly Attended
Miscellaneous Poems
Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly
Huswifery
A Fig for Thee Oh! Death
Francis Daniel Pastorius (1651–c. 1719)
Letter Sent from Philadelphia, May 30, 1698
] AMERICAN CONTEXTS
] COLONIAL DIARIES AND JOURNALS
] Introduction
] Samuel Sewall (1652–1730)
] FROM The Diary of Samuel Sewall
] Cotton Mather (1663–1728)
] FROM The Diary of Cotton Mather
] Sarah Kemble Knight (1666–1727)
] FROM The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York
] William Byrd (1674–1744)
] FROM The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758)
On Sarah Pierpont
Personal Narrative
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
FROM Images or Shadows of Divine Things
Edwards through a Modern Lens
| Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
| Mr. Edwards and the Spider
American Literature, 1750–1830
Introduction
Comparative Timeline
Print Culture and the Road to Revolution
Map: The Thirteen Colonies in 1775
Society and Culture in the New Nation
Map: The Missouri Compromise
The Emergence of American Literature
Writing Colonial Lives
Introduction
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
FROM Part One
FROM Part Two
| Franklin through a Modern Lens
| Mark Twain (1835–1910)
| The Late Benjamin Franklin
Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713–1755)
FROM Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge
John Woolman (1720–1772)
The Journal of John Woolman
Chapter I [Early Life and Vocation]
FROM Chapter III [Business Became My Burden]
Samson Occom (1723–1792)
A Short Narrative of My Life
| Occom through a Modern Lens
| James Ottery (b. 1953)
| The Diary of Samson Occum
Olaudah Equiano (1745?–1797)
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the
African, Written by Himself
Chapter 2 [Kidnapping, Enslavement, and the Middle Passage]
] AMERICAN CONTEXTS
] “TO BEGIN THE WORLD OVER AGAIN: THE EMERGING IDEA OF “AMERICA”
] Introduction
] J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813)
] Letters from an American Farmer
] FROM Letter III, What Is an American?
] John Dickinson (1732–1808)
] The Liberty Song
] Hannah Griffitts (1727–1817)
] The Female Patriots
] Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
] FROM Common Sense, 1776
] John Adams (1735–1826) and Abigail Adams (1744–1818)
] Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776
] Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 14, 1776
] Letters from John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
] Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
] Draft of the Declaration of Independence
] Notes on the State of Virginia
] Query XVII: The different religions received into that state?
] FROM Query XVIII: The particular customs and manners that may happen to be received in that state?
] George Washington (1732–1799)
] Letter to the Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island, 1790
] Absalom Jones (1746–1818)
] Petition of the People of Colour
] Tecumseh (1768–1813)
] Speech of Tecumseh to Governor Harrison
Literature for a New Nation
Introduction
] AMERICAN CONTEXTS
] “WHO READS AN AMERICAN BOOK?”:
] CALLS FOR A NATIONAL LITERATURE
] Introduction
] Royall Tyler (1757–1826)
] Prologue to The Contrast
] Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820)
] FROM The Gleaner, Number 96
] Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810)
] FROM The Preface to The American Review, and Literary Journal
] William Tudor (1779–1830)
] FROM An Essay on American Scenery
] Edward Tyrell Channing (1790–1856)
] FROM On Models in Literature
] James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
] FROM Notions of the Americans
Philip Freneau (1752–1832)
To Sir Toby
On the Emigration to America
The Wild Honey Suckle
The Indian Burying Ground
Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784)
On Being Brought from Africa to America
To the University of Cambridge, in New England
To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth
To S. M. a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works
A Farewell to America. To Mrs. S. W.
To His Excellency General Washington
Liberty and Peace, A Poem
Letter to Samson Occom, February 11, 1774
| Wheatley through a Modern Lens
| Kevin Young (b. 1970)
| Homage to Phillis Wheatley
Washington Irving (1783–1859)
The Sketch Book
The Author’s Account of Himself
The Wife
Rip Van Winkle
Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789–1867)
Cacoethes Scribendi
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790–1870)
Georgia Scenes
Georgia Theatrics
The Dance
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
Thanatopsis
The Yellow Violet
To a Waterfowl
To Cole, The Painter, Departing for Europe
The Prairies
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (1800–1841)
Mishosha, or the Magician and His Daughters
American Literature, 1830-1865
Introduction
Comparative Timeline
Technology, Transportation, and the Growth of the Literary Marketplace
Religion, Immigration, and Territorial Expansion
Sectionalism and the Coming of the Civil War
Map: The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
The Era of Reform
Introduction
] AMERICAN CONTEXTS
] “I WILL BE HEARD”: THE RHETORIC OF ANTEBELLUM REFORM
] Introduction
] David Walker (1785–1830)
] FROM An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World
] William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879)
] To the Public
] Orestes A. Brownson (1803–1876)
] FROM The Laboring Classes
] Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
] FROM A Treatise on Domestic Economy
] Seneca Falls Woman’s Convention (July 19–20, 1848)
] Declaration of Sentiments
] Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806–1893)
] FROM Woman and Her Needs
] Sojourner Truth (1795–1883)
] Speech to a Women’s Rights Convention
William Apess (1798–1839)
An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man
Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880)
Letter from New-York
[The Trial of Amelia Norman]
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Nature
Introduction
Chapter I. Nature
Chapter III. Beauty
Chapter IV. Language
Chapter VII. Spirit
FROM Chapter VIII. Prospects
The American Scholar
*Self-Reliance
Circles
Experience
Catharine
Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)
FROM Woman in the Nineteenth Century
New Year’s Day
Our City Charities
Things and Thoughts in Europe, Number 18
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
Trials of a Housekeeper
The Seamstress
The Freeman’s Dream: A Parable
Preface to Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897)
Letter from a Fugitive Slave [New-York Tribune, 1853]
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Preface by the Author
I. Childhood
VII. The Lover
X. A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl’s Life
XIV. Another Link to Life
XVII. The Flight
XXI. The Loophole of Retreat
XLI. Free at Last
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Resistance to Civil Government
Walden
FROM Economy
Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
The Bean-Field
The Village
Spring
Conclusion
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)
*Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
| Douglass through a Modern Lens
| Robert Hayden (1913–1980)
| Frederick Douglass
African American Slave Songs (1800–1865)
Roll, Jordan, Roll
Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Had
Many Thousand Go
Go Down, Moses
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Steal Away to Jesus
I Thank God I’m Free at Las’
| Slave Songs through a Modern Lens
| James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938)
| O Black and Unknown Bards
American Facts and American Fiction
Introduction
] AMERICAN CONTEXTS
] “COUNTLESS PHENOMENA OF THE TIMES”: THE ROLE OF THE PERIODICAL PRESS
] Introduction
] James Ewell Heath (1792–1862)
] Southern Literature, Southern Literary Messenger
] John L. O’Sullivan (1813–1895)
] FROM Introduction, The United States Magazine and Democratic Review
] Sarah Josepha Hale (1788–1879)
] Editors’ Table, Godey’s Lady’s Book
] Charles F. Briggs (1804–1877)
] Introductory, Putnam’s Monthly Magazine
] Thomas Hamilton (1822–1865)
] Apology, The Anglo-African Magazine
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
The Wives of the Dead
My Kinsman, Major Molineux
Young Goodman Brown
The Minister’s Black Veil
The Birth-Mark
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
Ligeia
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Purloined Letter
Fanny Fern (Sara Payson Willis Parton) (1811–1872)
The Tear of a Wife
Dollars and Dimes
Blackwell’s Island [Numbers I–III]
The “Coming” Woman
Herman Melville (1819–1891)
*Bartleby, the Scrivener
The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
Donald Grant Mitchell (Ik Marvel) (1822–1908)
A Bachelor’s Reverie
Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard (1823–1902)
Lemorne versus Huell
Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910)
*Life in the Iron-Mills
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)
The Brothers
New Poetic Voices
Introduction
] AMERICAN CONTEXTS
] THE AMERICAN MUSE: POETRY AT MIDCENTURY
] Introduction
] Lydia Sigourney (1791–1865)
] Indian Names
] To a Shred of Linen
] Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
] The Rhodora
] The Snow-Storm
] Hamatreya
] Days
] Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806–1893)
] The Unattained
] The Drowned Mariner
] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
] The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
] My Lost Youth
] John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
] The Hunters of Men
] The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to Her Daughters
] Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
] [Sonnet—to Science]
] To Helen
] The Raven
] Annabel Lee
] Frances E. W. Harper (1825–1911)
] The Slave Mother
] Ethiopia
] Rose Terry Cooke (1827–1892)
] Here
] Captive
] “The Harvest Is Past”
Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
Leaves of Grass
Inscriptions
One’s-Self I Sing
*Song of Myself
Children of Adam
Once I Pass’d through a
Populous City
Facing West from
California’s Shores
As Adam Early in the Morning
Calamus
In Paths Untrodden
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances
Trickle Drops
City of Orgies
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
Sea-Drift
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
By the Roadside
When I Heard the Learn’d
Astronomer
I Sit and Look Out
The Dalliance of the Eagles
Drum-Taps
Beat! Beat! Drums!
Cavalry Crossing a Ford
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
The Wound-Dresser
Reconciliation
Memories of President Lincoln
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Whispers of Heavenly Death
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Songs of Parting
So Long!
| Whitman through a Modern Lens
| Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
| Old Walt
| Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997)
| A Supermarket in California
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
Manuscript Version of “These are the days when Birds come back—” and 1890 Version
130 [Fr122] These are the days when Birds come back—
49 [Fr39] I never lost as much but twice
67 [Fr112] Success is counted sweetest
84 [Fr121] Her breast is fit for pearls,
185 [Fr202] “Faith” is a fine invention
199 [Fr225] I’m “wife”—I’ve finished that—
211 [Fr205] Come slowly—Eden!
214 [Fr207] I taste a liquor never brewed
216 [Fr124] Safe in their Alabaster Chambers (1859 and 1861 versions)
241 [Fr339] I like a look of Agony,
249 [Fr269] Wild Nights— Wild Nights!
252 [Fr312] I can wade Grief—
258 [Fr320] There’s a certain Slant of light,
271 [Fr307] A solemn thing—it was—I said—
280 [Fr340] I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
288 [Fr260] I’m Nobody! Who are you?
303 [Fr409] The Soul selects her own Society—
324 [Fr236] Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—
327 [Fr336] Before I got my eye put out
328 [Fr359] A Bird came down the Walk—
338 [Fr365] I know that He exists.
341 [Fr372] After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
357 [Fr615] God is a distant—stately Lover—
401 [Fr675] What Soft—Cherubic Creatures—
409 [Fr545] They dropped like Flakes—
435 [Fr620] Much Madness is divinest Sense
441 [Fr519] This is my letter to the World
444 [Fr524] It feels a shame to be Alive —
448 [Fr446] This was a Poet—It is That
449 [Fr448] I died for Beauty— but was scarce
465 [Fr591] I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
501 [Fr373] This World is not Conclusion.
502 [Fr377] At least—to pray—is left—is left—
508 [Fr353] I’m ceded—I’ve stopped being Theirs—
510 [Fr355] It was not Death, for I stood up,
512 [Fr360] The Soul has Bandaged moments—
605 [Fr513] The Spider holds a Silver Ball
632 [Fr598] The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
640 [Fr706] I cannot live with You—
650 [Fr760] Pain—has an Element of Blank—
657 [Fr466] I dwell in Possibility—
675 [Fr772] Essential Oils—are wrung—
709 [Fr788] Publication—is the Auction
712 [Fr479] Because I could not stop for Death—
754 [Fr764] My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—
883 [Fr930] The Poets light but Lamps—
986 [Fr1096] A narrow Fellow in the Grass
1052 [Fr800] I never saw a Moor—
1072 [Fr194] Title divine—is mine!
1078 [Fr1108] The Bustle in a House
1082 [Fr1044] Revolution is the Pod
1129 [Fr1263] Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
1463 [Fr1489] A Route of Evanescence
1545 [Fr1577] The Bible is an antique Volume—
1624 [Fr1668] Apparently with no surprise
1651 [Fr1715] A Word made Flesh is seldom
1732 [Fr1773] My life closed twice before its close—
1737 [Fr267] Rearrange a “Wife’s” affection!
1739 [Fr586] Some say goodnight—at night—
1760 [Fr1590] Elysium is as far as to
Letters
Exchange with Susan Gilbert Dickinson, summer 1861
To Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 7 June 1862
| Dickinson through a Modern Lens
| Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
| “I Am in Danger—Sir—”
| Cathy Song (b. 1955)
| A Poet in the House
] AMERICAN CONTEXTS
] “MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY”: THE MEANINGS OF THE CIVIL WAR
] Introduction
] John Brown (1800–1859)
] Last Speech, December 2, 1859
] Jefferson Davis (1808–1889)
] Inaugural Address, February 18, 1861
] Civil War Songs
] Dixie’s Land
] John Brown’s Body
] Battle Hymn of the Republic
] Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)
] Men of Color, to Arms!
] Herman Melville (1819–1891)
] The House-top
] Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
] The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863
] Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
] Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882)
] FROM A Memorial Discourse [Delivered February 12, 1865]
] Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut (1823–1886)
] A Diary from Dixie, April 19 –22, 1865
] William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
] The Death of Lincoln
] Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836–1919)
] Arlington Heights
] Henry Timrod (1828–1867)
] The Charleston Ode
] Frances E. W. Harper (1825–1911)
] Learning to Read
] Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
] FROM Memoranda during the War
Index of Authors and Titles