American Literature, Volume 1, 2nd edition

Part One: Exploration and Colonization (1492-1700)

To The Reader

David Cusick (Tuscarora) (c.1780-c.1831)

A Tale of the Foundation of the Great Island, Now North America

Thin Leather/Comalk Hawkih (Akimel O’odham, or Pima) (Dates TK). Translated by Edward H. Wood (Akimel O’odham, or Pima) and written down by J. William Lloyd

The Story of the Creation

Context and Response: King James Bible (1611), Genesis 1-3

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506),

Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage

From Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage

Gallery 1: Spanish Narratives of Exploration and Colonization

Bartolome de las Casas (1484-1566), From The Devastation of the Indies: Hispaniola

Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492-1585), From The Truthful History of the Conquest of New Spain

Nahuatl Elegies (1523), Epic Description of the Besieged City” and “Flowers and Songs of Sorrow”

Isabel de Guevara, “Letter to Princess Juana, from Paraguay, 1556”

Catalina de Erauso (1585-1650), From Memoir of a Basque Lieutenant Nun

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695), “Prologue to the Reader”

John Smith (1580-1631)

From The Generall Historie

Context and Responses: Woodcuts by Theodor de Bry from A Briefe and True Report of the New Found

Land of Virginia

from the Letter of John Rolfe to Sir Thomas Dale, 1614

William Bradford (1590-1657)

From Of Plymouth Plantation

Context and Response: from Thomas Morton, New English Canaan

John Winthrop (1588-1672)

A Modell of Christian Charity

from Journal

Context and Response: from Massachusetts General Court (1637), Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson

at the Court at Newton

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

The Prologue

The Author to her Book

In Honor of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory

Before the Birth of One of Her Children

To My Dear and Loving Husband

In Memory of the Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August 1665, Being a Year and a

Half Old

In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet, Who Deceased June 20, 1669, Being Three Years

and Seven Months Old

Here Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House

To My Dear Children

Context and Response: Edward Taylor (c. 1642-1729), Huswifery

Gallery 2: Vernacular Writing and the Individual

Richard Frethorne, Letters to his parents, Virginia 1623

Confessions of Praying Indians

Samuel Sewell (1652-1730), from Diary

William Byrd (1674-1744), from Secret Diary

Rebekah Chamblit (ca.1706-1733), The Declaration, Dying Warning and Advice

Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1723–1793), Letters

Mary Rowlandson (1637-1711)

A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Context and Response: Ransom letters

Cotton Mather (1663-1728)

from Wonders of the Invisible World

Context and Response: Tituba Trial Transcript

*****

Part Two: Enlightenment and Revolution (1700-1830)

To the Reader

Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727),
Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Personal Narrative

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

The Way to Wealth

Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America

From The Autobiography

Samson Occom (1723-1792)

A Short Narrative of My Life

Petition for the Montaukett People

Context and Response: Selected letters, Eleazar Wheelock

J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (1735-1813)

From Letters from an American Farmer

Gallery 3: Declarations of Independence

Signatures on Declaration of Independence

Thomas Paine (1737-1809), From Common Sense and The American Crisis, No. 1

John Adams (1735-1826) and Abigail Adams (1744-1818), “Remember the Ladies”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), The Declaration of Independence

Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), Letter to Thomas Jefferson

Prince Hall (1735-1807), Petition, January 13, 1777

Phillip Freneau (1752-1832)

On the Emigration to America and Peopling the Western Country

The Indian Burying Ground

On the Religion of Nature

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)

On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, 1770

To Maecenas

On Being Brought from Africa to America

To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works

To His Excellency General Washington

To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth

To the University of Cambridge in New England

Letter to Samson Occom

Context and Response: Thomas Jefferson, from Query XIV, Notes on the State of Virginia

John Marrant (1755-1791)

A Narrative of the Lord’s Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant, a Black

Washington Irving (1783-1859)

Rip Van Winkle

Context and Response: James Kirke Paulding (1779-1860), from National Literature

David Walker (1785–1830)

From Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World

Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (1791-1865)

The African Mother at Her Daughter’s Grave

The Deaf, Dumb and Blind Girl of the American Asylum at Hartford, Connecticut

To a Shred of Linen

Indian Names

Science and Religion

Niagara

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

Thanatopsis

The Prairies

Gallery 4: Indian Removal and Resistance

Cherokee Alphabet

Handsome Lake (1735-1815), How the White Race Came to America and Why the Gaiwiio Became a Necessity

David Brown (1802? - 1829), from Address of Dewi Brown, A Cherokee Indian

Memorial of the Cherokee Citizens, December 18, 1829

Andrew Jackson, Message to Congress, December 7, 1830

Clark Mills, Statue of Andrew Jackson

William Apess (1798-1839), An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man (1833)

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (1800-1841), Invocation

*****

Part Three: Literature in a Divided Nation (1830-1865)

To the Reader

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880)

Chocorua’s Curse

Slavery’s Pleasant Homes

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Nature

The American Scholar

Self-Reliance

Concord Hymn

The Rhodora

Context and Responses: George Ripley (1802-1880) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),

Correspondence

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Young Goodman Brown

The Minister's Black Veil

The Birth-Mark

Context and Response: Herman Melville (1819-1891), Hawthorne and His Mosses

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

A Psalm of Life

The Village Blacksmith

The Slave’s Dream

The Arsenal at Springfield

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

The Hunters of Men

Toussaint L’Ouverture

The Yankee Girl

Lines

The Ship-Builders

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

The Raven

Annabel Lee

The Fall of the House of Usher

Ligeia

The Philosophy of Composition

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women.

Context and Response: Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), The Declaration of Sentiments

Gallery 5: Women, Domesticity, and Publication

Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820), Desultory Thoughts upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self-

Complacency, especially in Female Bosoms

Eliza Lee Follen (1787-1860), Women’s Work

Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879), Books

Plate from Godey’s Lady’s Book

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), Feeling

Sarah Willis Parton (1811-1872), A Chapter on Literary Women

Phoebe Cary (1824-1871), Advice Gratis to Certain Women

Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)

from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Walking

Civil Disobedience

Life Without Principle

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

Gallery 6: Slavery and Abolition

John Woolman (1720-1772), from Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes

Peter Osborne (fl. 1832), Address

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), To the Public

Vignettes from Poems Written During the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States (1837)

Fannie Kemble (1809-1893), from Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation

Henry Highland Garnet, from An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America

Advertising poster for Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Bartleby the Scrivener

Context and Response: Orestes Brownson (1803-1876), from The Laboring Classes

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Song of Myself

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

When I Heard at the Close of Day

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim

The Wound-Dresser

Reconciliation

When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd

From Democratic Vistas

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)

The Slave Mother

Eliza Harris

The Slave Auction

The Colored People in America

Learning to Read

Bury Me in a Free Land

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

130 (“These are the days when Birds come back—”)

199 (“I'm 'wife'—I've finished that—”)

214 (“I taste a liquor never brewed—”)

216 (“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—”)

241 (“I like a look of Agony”)

249 (“Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”)

258 (“There's a certain Slant of light”)

280 (“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”)

303 (“The Soul selects her own Society—”)

324 (“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—”)

341 (“After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”)

348 (“I dreaded that first Robin, so”)

441 (“This is my letter to the World”)

448 (“This was a Poet—It is That”)

465 (“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—”)

501 (“This World is not Conclusion”)

520 (“I started Early—Took my Dog—”)

632 (“The Brain—is wider than the Sky—”)

650 (“Pain—has an Element of Blank—”)

709 (“Publication—is the Auction”)

712 (“Because I could not stop for Death—”)

754 (“My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—”)

986 (“A narrow Fellow in the Grass")

1129 (“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—”)

1545 (“The Bible is an antique Volume—”)

1732 (“My life closed twice before its close;")

from Letters of Emily Dickinson

April 15, 1862

April 25, 1862

Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910)

Life in the Iron-Mills

Chronology

Credits

Index

Map of the United States