THE LATER POETS Although prose forms, especially the novel and the short story, dominated the period, yet the amount of poetry published from 1860 to 1899 surpasses, in mere bulk at least, all that had been produced in America before that date. In quality also it is notable. Stedman's _An American Anthology_ has 773 pages of selections, and of this space 462 pages, or almost two-thirds, are given to the poets who made their first appearance during these forty years. Very many whom he mentions were only incidentally poets. A surprising number of those who are known to-day only as novelists or short story writers began their career with a volume and in some cases with several volumes of verse. Few indeed have been the writers who have not contributed poetical material. Among the poets are to be numbered writers as inseparably connected with prose as Thoreau, Burroughs, Howells, Mrs. Stuart Phelps Ward, S. Weir Mitchell, Miss Woolson, Lew Wallace, Mrs. Wilkins Freeman, Harris, Page, Mrs. Cooke, Ambrose Bierce, Alice Brown, Hamlin Garland, and A. S. Hardy. Those who may be counted as the distinctive poets of the era, the third generation of poets in America, make not a long list if only those be taken who have done new and distinctive work. Not many names need be added to the following twenty-five whose first significant collections were published during the twenty years following 1870: 1870. Bret Harte. _Plain Language from Truthful James._ 1871. John Hay. _Pike County Ballads._ 1871. Joaquin Miller. _Songs of the Sierras._ 1871. Will Carleton. _Poems._ 1872. Celia Thaxter. _Poems._ 1873. John Boyle O'Reilly. _Songs of the Southern Seas._ 1875. Richard Watson Gilder. _The New Day._ 1877. Sidney Lanier. _Poems._ 1881. Ina Coolbrith. _A Perfect Day and Other Poems._ 1882. John Bannister Tabb. _Poems._ 1883. James Whitcomb Riley. _The Old Swimmin'-Hole._ 1883. George Edward Woodberry. _The North Shore Watch._ 1884. Edith M. Thomas. _A New Year's Masque._ 1884. Henry Cuyler Bunner. _Airs from Arcady._ 1884. Louise Imogen Guiney. _Songs at the Start._ 1886. Clinton Scollard. _With Reed and Lyre._ 1887. Eugene Field. _Culture's Garland._ 1887. Madison Cawein. _Blooms of the Berry._ 1887. Robert Burns Wilson. _Life and Love._ 1888. Irwin Russell. _Dialect Poems._ 1889. Richard Hovey. _The Laurel: an Ode._ John James Piatt, Emma Lazarus, Emily Dickinson, and E. R Sill, whose first volumes fall outside of the twenty-years period, complete the number. I