The present volume is an outgrowth of the writer’s “Handbook of American Authors,” first published in 1884, several features which the judgment of the public approved in the earlier work having been retained in this. Without pretending to contain an exhaustive list of American writers, it may nevertheless lay claim to be fairly inclusive, as the more than six thousand names herein mentioned will serve to show. A few names that might naturally be looked for here have been omitted at the request of their owners; while some others have not been included, for the reason that diligent search failed to discover any trustworthy data concerning them. Here and there, too, the reader may chance upon unfilled dates of birth, or initials unexpanded. Yet in the majority of such cases application by letter made directly to the owners of the names aforesaid, or to relatives and immediate friends of such persons, has failed to elicit any response. All reasonable effort has been made to obtain trustworthy information upon such points, but failure to obtain replies to letters of inquiry must account for the greater number of such omissions; and here it may not be out of place to mention that information of more general character obtained from private sources has now and then been received too late to be of service, owing to the fact that the work was already electrotyped before it came to hand. In a comprehensive work like this, including so large a number of names and so many thousand dates, errors must of necessity occur, and the author cannot hope to escape adverse criticism in this respect. While absolute accuracy would have been impossible to attain, he has nevertheless taken no little pains to approach this ideal; and to this end, besides resorting to the ordinary means of information, he has consulted hundreds of catalogues of libraries, colleges, and publishers, as well as denominational year-books, and in numberless instances has availed himself of trustworthy information received directly from private sources. It thus happens that in certain cases dates given in this volume differ from those in other works of reference, and where this occurs the reason for the adoption of a different date herein is supported by excellent authority. It has been thought advisable to retain the “u” in the spelling of such words as “colour,” “favour,” and the like, the exceptions to this occurring in titles where the spelling of the original has been followed. In connection with this it may not be amiss to note that the original spelling of titles has been very commonly though not invariably retained. To have done this in every instance, however, would have entailed more labour than it was desirable to incur.