size the relations between the literary work and the general movements in American civilization and intellectual history. In the textual annotations, as in the introductory essays and biographical sketches, we have attempted to secure as much objectivity as possible, to suppress individualistic critical tendencies of our own in favor of the consensus of our professional peers, and to leave the reader free to pursue his own ideas and values without having to contend with ours. Yet we have annotated liberally, believing it our function as editors to elucidate any substantial obscurity that would handicap a reader lacking immediate access to the appropriate reference books. * * * "The study of American literature can be acceptably organized in several ways; we have therefore attempted to provide a certain flexibility in our sequence of authors and texts. In general we have followed a chronological order, but by a few slight departures we were also able to bring authors together under topical headings which represent the pronounced response of our literature, at one time or another, to regional influences, social forces, dominant ideas, historical events, or aesthetic values." Time has brought other changes in the years since those paragraphs were written. We record here with sorrow the death of our collaborator, Richmond Croom Beatty. We hope that he would have approved both our revision and our loyalty to these principles in teaching American literature. The selection of texts and the organization of this edition represents an agreement of the editors reflecting their own experience in the teaching of this literature. Mr. Long has been responsible, in the first instance, for the texts in the first half of Volume 2, comprising the "Emergence of Modern American Literature," or the period from Whitman to Dreiser. Mr. Bradley assumes final responsibility for the text as a whole and for seeing it through the press. We are grateful to friends and colleagues throughout the country who have made suggestions for the addition or alteration of texts. Mr. Bradley has been indebted to his colleague Professor Robert E. Spiller for his knowledge, through the years, of changing tendencies of teaching and research in this field. We are obligated to Baylor University Library for many appreciated services. We are deeply indebted to the Rare Book Collection of the Library of the University of Pennsylvania and particularly to its Librarian, Neda M. Westlake, who supervised the procurement of the honored texts and the verification of data for annotations and for the bibliographies. We deeply appreciate the well-informed |