George and Barbara Perkins

BEGINNING A NEW HALF CENTURY

With its twelfth edition, THE AMERICAN TRADITION IN LITERATURE continues its second half-century of scholarly and educational leadership. No other anthology of American literature has held favor so long or been so frequently admired and imitated. Its chosen authors and selections are repeated as the core readings of competing anthologies. It was the first American literature anthology to offer both a two-volume and a shorter one-volume edition, first to provide substantial representation for women and minorities, and it remains the only one to recognize the changes recently brought to our literature by the rapid globalization of our institutions, our people, and our writers.

Leading where others follow, this is the book that first:

--Defined the central canon of American literature (1956-1957).

--Included complete novels (1961).

--Enriched the canon to include better representation of women, African-Americans, and Native Americans (1974).

--Inserted colored plates of writers and iconic images of American history (1994).

--Gave prominent recognition to the substantial recent contributions of immigrant writers (1999).

--Added timelines, black and white photographs, portraits, and frontispieces (2002).

--Included Crosscurrents, brief sections that offer opportunities for further exploration and writing by providing social, intellectual, and political contexts for selected historical periods (2007).

Readers of this new edition will find its distinctive qualities of selection and scholarship continued and enhanced.

COHERENT VISION

Edited in its first three editions (1956-1967) by Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long, eminent scholars who established its place at the center of American literary study, ATIL has been edited since the fourth edition by George and Barbara Perkins, who have maintained the idea of a book for students at all levels of understanding and achievement. Their partnership brings coherence to the confusions and contradictions of college and university anthologies of American literature compiled by committees or driven by political agendas. In reassessing the materials for each new edition, they strive to present the best and most necessary elements of American literature in volumes that accommodate the work of a college course, provide instructors and students with choices, and avoid the confusion of unnecessary excess. Maintaining that vision in this edition they have responded to changing pedagogic climates and have taken advantage of improved book-making technologies and advances in electronic support systems to incorporate major innovations. For this new edition they have profited from the advice and contributions of two new Advisory editors, James P. Phelan and Elizabeth M. Renker, both of Ohio State University.

UNMATCHED COVERAGE

Over the years, THE AMERICAN TRADITION IN LITERATURE has earned an unmatched reputation for concise, clearly written, and accurate introductions, notes and bibliographies. In order to provide instructors freedom to design their individual classes and to encourage critical thinking among students, the book provides generous selections, informs with pertinent facts, and avoids advancing specific political agendas. The goal is a book spacious enough for many choices in assignments, but compact enough to escape unattractive and unwieldy heft. Careful selection within these guidelines allows elimination of much that is superfluous and facilitates inclusion of significant writers who remain wholly absent from or under-represented in other anthologies. Among these are:

Isabel Allende, Ann Beattie, William Bartram, Robert Bly, Joseph Brodsky, Rachel Carson, Nash Candelaria, St. Jean Crevecoeur, Edwidge Danticat, Don DeLillo, Bob Dylan, Betty Friedan, Hamlin Garland, Ellen Glasgow, Woody Guthrie, Briton Hammon, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Red Cloud, Red Jacket, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, James Russell Lowell, James Merrill, Czeslaw Milosz, William Vaughan Moody, Sarah Morgan, Bharati Mukherjee, Vladimir Nabokov, Mary Oliver, Francis Parkman, Annie Proulx, John Crowe Ransom, Sam Shepard, I. B. Singer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, William Stafford, Anne Tyler, Giovanni Da Verrazzano, August Wilson, James Wright, Jay Wright, and Elinor Wylie.

Prominent features of this edition include:

--New and newly enriched Crosscurrents on “Romanticism and the American Indian,” ”Nature and the Environment in a New World,” “Slavery, the Slave Trade, and the Civil War,” “Faith and Crisis,” “The Age of Anxiety: The Beat Generation and Social Responsibilities,” and “What is an American? Freedom and Responsibility.”

--Revised contents that add dates for periods and clarify thematic groupings.

--Integration of the Globalization of American Literature section into the general contents.

--New writers:

John James Audubon, Abraham Cahan, Alexander Falconbridge, George Fitzhugh, Al Gore, Francis Higginson, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Sarah Morgan Piatt, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft [Bamewawagezhikaquay], and John Edgar Wideman.

--New works by previously represented writers:

Ambrose Bierce, “Chickamauga;” Emily Dickinson, “I Know that He Exists;” Washington Irving, “Traits of Indian Character;” Robert Lowell. “Memories of West Street and Lepke;” Herman Melville, from Moby-Dick; Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail, “The Buffalo;” Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart;” Carl Sandburg, “Chicago.”

CROSSCURRENTS

To assist students who may be overwhelmed by exponential increases in primary literature and in printed and electronic aids to understanding, the editors have looked again at a past that becomes less and less familiar to each succeeding generation. Students of literature find themselves increasingly out of touch with the contexts of earlier writings. To alleviate this condition, we have designed and incorporated a series of “Crosscurrents,” sections that highlight some of the passing intellectual and cultural developments that have helped determine the ongoing flow of our literature. Carefully selected excerpts from various sources illuminate the times, suggest avenues for further exploration, and provide materials for discussion and writing.

For Volume I, these include PURITANS, INDIANS, AND WITCHCRAFT, featuring passages from William Wood, John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, Mary Towne Easty, and Samuel Sewall; ROMANTICISM AND THE AMERICAN INDIAN,with Sir Walter Scott, Washington Irving, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, William Gilmore Simms, Lydia Maria Child,and Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney; NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN A NEW WORLD, with Francis Higginson, William Bartram, John James Audubon, Francis Parkman, and Jane Johnston Schoolcraft; and
TRANSCENDENTALISM, WOMEN, AND SOCIAL IDEALS, with Elizabeth Peabody, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, and Fanny Fern; SLAVERY, THE SLAVE TRADE AND THE CIVIL WAR, with Briton Hammon, William Cushing, Alexander Falconbridge, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George Fitzhugh, Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Morgan, and Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt;and FAITH AND CRISIS, with Herman Melville, Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, and Emily Dickinson.

For Volume II, they include FREEDOM IN THE GILDED AGE, including passages from Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, George Washington Cable, and Booker T. Washington; PROSPERITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, with Andrew Carnegie, Stephen Crane, William Vaughn Moody, Zitkala-sa, and W. E. B. Du Bois; THE JAZZ AGE AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE, with James Weldon Johnson, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, and St. James Infirmary Blues; THE AGE OF ANXIETY: THE BEAT GENERATION AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES, with Jack Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Rachel Carson and Martin Luther King, Jr; and WHAT IS AN AMERICAN? FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY, with Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Betty Friedan, Tim O'Brien, and Al Gore.

Intended to stimulate interest without exhausting their subjects, each of these Crosscurrents is crafted to resonate against other selections within the book and suggest avenues for exploration and writing outside of it.

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ONLINE LEARNING CENTER

For students enrolled in classes using THE AMERICAN TRADITION IN LITERATURE, this will provide help with literary analysis, understanding basic literary concepts, writing about literature, finding and evaluating online resources, avoiding plagiarism, and formatting bibliographies, as well as a sample research paper in MLA style.

For professors, a password-protected segment will provide supplemental information on more than 150 authors, historical overviews for each period, suggestions for connections between writers and works, Powerpoint lectures designed for major periods, sample quiz and exam questions, and an annotated bibliography.

CLASSROOM PERFOMANCE SYSTEM

A McGraw-Hill system designed for large lecture classes, CPS gives instructors the ability to solicit immediate wireless feedback from each student, thereby promoting classroom involvement and assisting understanding. CPS provides questions to encourage classroom discussion, outlines for Powerpoint lectures, and materials for multiple-choice and true-false quizzes.