Page images
PDF
EPUB

PART II

CRITICAL COMMENTS

FOREWORD TO CRITICAL COMMENTS

The following critical comments afford as a whole a brief history of American poetry. The single studies prepared by Frank M. Webster and George W. Sherburn, and the six units written by Howard M. Jones, are indicated respectively by the initials W, S, and J. The remainder by the editor, are undesignated.

Most of the volumes

It

The book lists have been reduced to low terms. included should be on the shelves of the average college or normal school library, or should be available for reserve use in university courses. has not been considered necessary, or even advisable, to multiply references to works which treat of various authors. Unless the passages are of unusual interest they are not mentioned in the short lists. The more important of the general works are as follows:

BOOKS ON THE WHOLE PERIOD

History and Criticism

History of American Poetry, J. L. Onderdonck.
American Literature, C. F. Richardson, 2 vols.
Poets of America, E.. C. Stedman.

History of American Literature, W. P. Trent.

Cambridge History of American Literature, W. P. Trent and Others, 2 vols. (In preparation.)

Literary History of America, Barrett Wendell.

America in Literature, G. E. Woodberry.

Southern Writers, W. M. Baskerville.

Literature of the South, M. J. Moses.

American Lands and Letters, Donald G. Mitchell.

Collections

Cyclopedia of American Literature, E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, 2 vols. "Poets and Poetry of America, R. W. Griswold.

Poems of American History, B. E. Stevenson.

Library of American Literature, E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson,
II vols.

Library of Southern Literature, C. W. Kent, 15 vols.

Poems of American Patriotism, Chosen by Brander Matthews.

BOOKS ON THE COLONIAL PERIOD

History and Criticism

American Verse, 1625-1807, W. B. Otis.

The Spirit of the American Revolution as Revealed in the Poetry of the Period, S. W. Patterson.

History of American Literature, 1607-1765, M. C. Tyler, 2 vols. Literary History of the American Revolution, M. C. Tyler, 2 vols.

Special Collection

Early American Writers, W. B. Cairns.

BOOKS ON THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

History and Criticism-.

American Prose Masters, W. C. Brownell.

The Poetry and Poets of America, Churton Collins.
Contemporaries, T. W. Higginson.

My Literary Friends and Acquaintances, W. D. Howells.
My Literary Passions, W. D. Howells.

The New England Poets, W. C. Lawton.

A Fable for Critics, J. R. Lowell.

Criticisms in Complete Works of E. A. Poe.

Old Friends, William Winter.

History of American Literature since 1870, F. L. Pattee.
American Poets and Their Theology, A. H. Strong.

ANNE BRADSTREET (1612-1672)

Anne Bradstreet was born in England in 1612. Her father, Thomas Dudley, during her childhood, was steward of the estate of the Puritan Earl of Lincoln, in whose library it seems likely that she made her acquaintance with the works of Spenser and Du Bartas, and with North's Plutarch. She was married to Simon Bradstreet in 1628, and in 1630 came with her husband and her father to Massachusetts. Both men became eminent in colonial affairs. After many changes of home, the Bradstreets settled, in 1644, at Andover, where she lived until her death in 1672. She was the mother of eight children, among whose descendants are the Channings, the two Richard H. Danas, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, and Charles Eliot Norton. In 1650 there was printed in London a collection of her poems, which were attributed by her agent, the Rev. John Woodbridge, to "The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America," and in less flowery language were ascribed to "a gentlewoman in those parts."

I. Texts.

The Works of Anne Bradstreet, in Prose and Verse, edited by John Harvard Ellis. Charlestown, 1867. This contains a valuable memoir.

« PreviousContinue »