Towards the end of 1893, as the time was approaching for the issuing of No. 3000, and again, in 1900, when No. 3500 was soon to be reached, I hinted to my Leipsic friends the peculiar fitness of singling out one of these possible Memorial Volumes and making it a sketch of our literary life, in accordance with the promise made in Professor Morley’s Preface. I even suggested that Professor Moses Coit Tyler, who had then just completed his great work on our literature, be invited to perform the task. The last letter I ever received from this genial spirit, dated from the Isle of Wight, September 5, 1897, contains this passage: “I appreciate the honour you have done me in mentioning my name to Baron Tauchnitz, in connection with a proposed volume on American literature.” Nothing, however, came of this; and when, some ten years later, I was invited to prepare the present volume, my first thought was to utilise the _magnum opus_ of Professor Tyler, who had, in the meanwhile, passed away. So my chief care has been the first two chapters, drawn, with the kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, and of the family of Professor Tyler, from his four authoritative volumes, “A History of American Literature during the Colonial Period,” and “The Literary History of the American Revolution,” to which Sir George Otto Trevelyan refers in his “American Revolution” as “a remarkable specimen of the historical faculty.” The chief labour in the preparation of this volume has fallen upon my friends and collaborators of the Department of English and the Sage School of Philosophy of my Alma Mater. Acknowledgment is, further, particularly due to Professors J. M. Hart and M. W. Sampson, also of Cornell University, for valuable suggestions and considerable help. The work of seeing the American edition through the press has been done by Professors Northup and Cooper. THEODORE STANTON. PARIS, September, 1908. CONTENTS. PAGE COLONIAL LITERATURE. By the late MOSES COIT TYLER, LL.D., Professor of American History in Cornell University. Abridged by the Editor. I. First Period (1607-1676) 1 II. Second Period (1676-1765) 19 III. General Literary Forces in the Colonial Time 30 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. By the late MOSES COIT TYLER. Abridged by the Editor. I. A General View 39 II. The Principal Writers 48 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. I. The Historians 89 By ISAAC MADISON BENTLEY, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology in Cornell University.