Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Study of American Literature
Nevertheless, the treatment in our text itself is in the main biographical. That is, the efiort has almost always been to make the single life appear an articulated and rational whole. This method craves far more space than was here available but, as Miss Scudder remarks of her similar undertaking for English literature, any such volume as ours must serve merely as an introduction to far wider reading. The writer believes that biographical treatment is the most intelligible to the young reader. It also seems to him the most truthful. That the artist, more than other men, can escape largely from local or temporal limitations, and find his spiritual kin, seems undeniable; yet from his truest self he cannot escape. Even when the artistic activity seems most detached from the man, as in Haw thorne, or even in Poe, the work will be better understood by a sympathetic study of the life, the whole life.
The general policy has been to mention relatively few persons, in order to leave a definite impression as to each. The especial interests of students in school or college have been steadily considered. In particular, Hawthorne and Longfellow have been treated with relative fullness and somewhat critical method, because their works have, and should have, a very large part in our popular education. The competent and judicious teacher may prefer to throw more emphasis on other authors, Franklin, Irving, Emerson, or Lowell. In that case the materials are of course abundant and close at hand. The chrono logical tables are an integral portion of the work, and supply many items which may be missed in the text.
A fuller treatment of one group will be found in the author's New England Poets, Macmillan, 1898. While the present book comes down to the year 1900, there is, naturally, no attempt to pass final judgment in detail on the career of men and women still living.
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