Chronology p.1497.

Bibliographies p. 1489.

I. The Colonial Period, 1607-1761. Colonial beginnings in virginia and New england. Seventeenth-Century New england puritanism. The colonial frontier. Religious currents of the Eighteenth century. Economic thought. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). -- II. The Revolutionary Period, 1761-1783. -- III. The Early National Period, 1783-1829. Nationalism and democracy. Frontier thought. Economic thought. -- IV. A Mid-nineteenth-century Civilization, 1829-1865. Economic, social and political thought. Frontier thought, Spiritual and ethical exploration. Some romantic writers. Nationalism and sectionalism. -- V. Transition to the Machine Age, 1865-1919. Walt Whitman (1819-1892). Frontier thought. Opinion in the new south. Economic and political thought. Social thought and humanitarianism. Religious and philosophical thought. Western humorists. The rise of realism. -- VI. Contemporary Thought, 1919-. Trends in social and political thought. Trends in religious and philosophical thought. Trends in recent literary criticism. Trends in recent poetry. Trends in recent fiction.

This book exhibits, for the first time in American literature, the writings of Americans for the purpose of defining and illustrating American literary progress in relation to American intellectual progress.