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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

General

Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

American literature

_TO ROBERTS BROTHERS_, for selections from Edward Everett Hale, Helen
Hunt Jackson, Louise Chandler Moulton and Louisa M. Alcott.

_TO ORANGE, JUDD & CO._, for extracts from Edward Eggleston.

_TO DODD, MEAD & CO._, for selections from E. P. Roe, Marion Harland
(Mrs. Terhune), Amelia E. Barr and Martha Finley.

_TO D. APPLETON & CO._, for Wm. Cullen Bryant and John Bach McMaster.

_TO MACMILLAN & CO._, for F. Marion Crawford.

_TO HORACE L. TRAUBEL_, Executor, for Walt Whitman.

_TO ESTES & LAURIAT_, for Gail Hamilton (Mary Abigail Dodge).

_TO LITTLE, BROWN & CO._, for Francis Parkman.

_TO FUNK & WAGNALLS_, for Josiah Allen’s Wife (Miss Holley).

_TO LEE & SHEPARD_, for Yawcob Strauss (Charles Follen Adams), Oliver
Optic (William T. Adams) and Mary A. Livermore.

_TO J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO._, for Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye).

_TO GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS_, for Uncle Remus (Joel C. Harris).

_TO TICKNOR & CO._, for Julian Hawthorne.

_TO PORTER & COATES_, for Edward Ellis and Horatio Alger.

_TO WILLIAM F. GILL & CO._, for Whitelaw Reid.

_TO C. H. HUDGINS & CO._, for Henry W. Grady.

_TO THE “COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,”_ for Julian Hawthorne.

_TO T. B. PETERSON & BROS._, for Frances Hodgson Burnett.

_TO JAS. R. OSGOOD & CO._, for Jane Goodwin Austin.

_TO GEO. R. SHEPARD_, for Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

_TO J. LEWIS STACKPOLE_, for John L. Motley.

Besides the above, we are under special obligation to a number of
authors who kindly furnished, in answer to our request, selections
which they considered representative of their writings.

  Illustration:            American Authors
           Hawthorne • Cooper • H. B. Stowe • Prescott • Irving

                            INTRODUCTION.

“THE ink of a Nation’s Scholars is more sacred than the blood of its
martyrs,”――declares Mohammed. It is with this sentence in mind, and
a desire to impress upon our fellow countrymen the excellence, scope
and volume of American literature, and the dignity and personality
of American authorship, that this work has been prepared and is now
offered to the public.

The volume is distinctly American, and, as such it naturally appeals
to the patriotism of Americans. Every selection which it contains
was written by an American. Its perusal, we feel confident, will
both entertain the reader and quicken the pride of every lover of his
country in the accomplishments of her authors.

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