Historical Background. Literary Environment. The National Spirit in Prose and Verse. The Knickerbocker School. Halleck, Drake, Willis and Paulding. Southern Writers. Simms, Kennedy, Wilde and Wirt. Various New England Writers. First Literature of the West. Major Writers of the Period. Irving. Bryant. Cooper. Poe. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography. CHAPTER III. THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT Political History. Social and Intellectual Changes. Brook Farm and Other Reform Societies. The Transcendental Movement. Literary Characteristics of the Period. The Elder Poets. Longfellow. Whittier. Lowell. Holmes, Lanier. Whitman. The Greater Prose Writers. Emerson. Hawthorne. Some Minor Poets. Timrod, Hayne, Ryan, Stoddard and Bayard Taylor. Secondary Writers of Fiction. Mrs. Stowe, Dana, Herman Melville, Cooke, Eggleston and Winthrop. Juvenile Literature. Louisa M. Alcott. Trowbridge. Miscellaneous Prose. Thoreau. The Historians. Motley, Prescott and Parkman. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography. CHAPTER IV. THE ALL-AMERICA PERIOD The New Spirit of Nationality. Contemporary History. The Short Story and its Development. Bret Harte. The Local-Color Story and Some Typical Writers. The Novel since 1876. Realism in Recent Fiction. Howells. Mark Twain. Various Types of Realism. Dialect Stories. Joel Chandler Harris. Recent Romances. Historical Novels. Poetry since 1876. Stedman and Aldrich. The New Spirit in Poetry. Joaquin Miller. Dialect Poems. The Poetry of Common Life. Carleton and Riley. Other Typical Poets. Miscellaneous Prose. The Nature Writers. History and Biography. John Fiske. Literary History and Reminiscence. Bibliography. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS William Shakespeare Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain Cædmon Cross at Whitby Abbey Domesday Book The Norman Stair, Canterbury Cathedral Chaucer Pilgrims setting out from the "Tabard" A Street in Caerleon on Usk The Almonry, Westminster Michael Drayton Edmund Spenser Raleigh's Birthplace, Budleigh Salterton The Library, Stratford Grammar School, attended by Shakespeare Anne Hathaway's Cottage The Main Room, Anne Hathaway's Cottage Cawdor Castle, Scotland, associated with Macbeth Francis Beaumont John Fletcher Ben Jonson Sir Philip Sidney Francis Bacon John Milton Cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire Ludlow Castle John Bunyan Bunyan Meetinghouse, Southwark John Dryden George Herbert Sir Thomas Browne Isaac Walton Old Fishing House, on River Dove, used by Walton Alexander Pope Twickenham Parish Church, where Pope was buried Jonathan Swift Trinity College, Dublin Joseph Addison Magdalen College, Oxford Sir Richard Steele Dr. Samuel Johnson Dr. Johnson's House (Bolt Court, Fleet St.) James Boswell Edmund Burke Edward Gibbon Thomas Gray Stoke Poges Churchyard, showing Part of the Church and Gray's Tomb Oliver Goldsmith "The Cheshire Cheese," London, showing Dr. Johnson's Favorite Seat