III MARK TWAIN 45 IV BRET HARTE 63 V THE DISCOVERY OF PIKE COUNTY 83 VI JOAQUIN MILLER 99 VII THE TRANSITION POETS 116 VIII RISE OF THE NATURE WRITERS 137 IX WALT WHITMAN 163 X THE CLASSICAL REACTION 186 XI RECORDERS OF THE NEW ENGLAND DECLINE 220 XII THE NEW ROMANCE 244 XIII LATER POETS OF THE SOUTH 271 XIV THE ERA OF SOUTHERN THEMES AND WRITERS 294 XV THE LATER POETS 321 XVI THE TRIUMPH OF THE SHORT STORY 355 XVII SHIFTING CURRENTS OF FICTION 385 XVIII THE ESSAYISTS 416 INDEX 441 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1870 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1870 CHAPTER I THE SECOND DISCOVERY OF AMERICA I We are beginning to realize that the Civil War marks a dividing line in American history as sharp and definitive as that burned across French history by the Revolution. That the South had been vastly affected by the war was manifest from the first. The widespread destruction of property, the collapse of the labor system, and the fall of the social régime founded on negro slavery, had been so dramatic and so revolutionary in their results that they had created everywhere a feeling that the ultimate effects of the war were confined to the conquered territory. Grady's phrase, "the new South," and later the phrase, "the end of an era," passing everywhere current, served to strengthen the impression. That the North had been equally affected, that there also an old régime had perished and a new era been inaugurated, was not so quickly realized. The change there had been undramatic; it had been devoid of all those picturesque accompaniments that had been so romantic and even sensational in the South; but with the perspective of half a century we can see now that it had been no less thoroughgoing and revolutionary.