The last twenty years have made great changes in American authorship.
Many new names must now be added to the older lists, and many formerly
familiar ones must be dropped from them. Hence these extracts have for
the most part been derived, with assiduous care, directly from the
collected works of our standard authors. This part of my labor has been
greatly facilitated by the courtesy of the gentlemen connected with the
Society, the Mercantile, and the Astor, Library, whose constant kindness
I gratefully acknowledge.
The principal alterations which will be found in this edition are the
following.
1. The extracts, formerly, of necessity, brief and fragmentary, have
given place to more extended and coherent passages.
2. A much larger space has been allotted to the more eminent authors.
Such writers as Franklin, Jefferson, Calhoun, Webster, Wirt, Irving,
Cooper, Hawthorne, Channing, Beecher, Prescott, Motley, Shea, Bryant,
Poe, Emerson, and Lowell, have been much more adequately exhibited.
3. Many later writers have been added, so that the work more fully
represents the rapid development of literary effort among us.
4. A few writers, formerly included, have been dropped from the list,
not always as less deserving a place, but sometimes as having less
adaptation to the purposes of the book.
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