Library of the Best American Literature
Reading edition
REPRESENTATIVES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.
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
ELEGANTLY ILLUSTRATED WITH HALF TONE PORTRAITS
And Photographs of Authors’ Homes, together with Many Other Illustrations in the Text
MONARCH BOOK COMPANY,
Successors to and formerly L. P. Miller & Co.,
CHICAGO, ILL. PHILADELPHIA, PA.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1897, by W. E. SCULL, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. All rights reserved.
ALL PERSONS ARE WARNED NOT TO INFRINGE UPON OUR COPYRIGHT BY USING EITHER THE MATTER OR THE PICTURES IN THIS VOLUME.
LITERATURE OF AMERICA.
PART
1.
Great Poets of America
2.
Our Most Noted Novelists
3.
Famous Women Novelists
4.
Representative Women Poets of America
5.
Well-known Essayists, Critics and Sketch Writers
6.
Great American Historians and Biographers
7.
Our National Humorists
8.
Popular Writers for Young People
9.
Noted Journalists and Magazine Contributors
10.
Great Orators and Popular Lecturers
11.
Famous Women Orators and Reformers
12.
Miscellaneous Masterpieces and Choice Gems
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
Our obligation to the following publishers is respectfully and gratefully acknowledged, since, without the courtesies and assistance of these publishers and a number of the living authors, it would have been impossible to issue this volume.
Copyright selections from the following authors are used by the permission of and special arrangement with MESSRS. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., their authorized publishers:—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry W. Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor, Maurice Thompson, Colonel John Hay, Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, Edward Bellamy, Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss Murfree), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward), Octave Thanet (Miss French), Alice Cary, Phœbe Cary, Charles Dudley Warner, E. C. Stedman, James Parton, John Fiske and Sarah Jane Lippincott.
TO THE CENTURY CO., we are indebted for selections from Richard Watson Gilder, James Whitcomb Riley and Francis Richard Stockton.
TO CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, for extracts from Eugene Field.
TO HARPER & BROTHERS, for selections from Will Carleton, General Lew Wallace, W. D. Howells, Thomas Nelson Page, John L. Motley, Charles Follen Adams and Lyman Abbott.
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.
American Authors
Hawthorne • Cooper • H. B. Stowe • Prescott • Irving