Excerpt from American Literature IN this outline of our literary progress it is especially designed to show how essentially Amer ican literature has been an outgrowth of American life. A people originally of English stock and increasingly open to European influences, we have nevertheless a national character, modified by local conditions, and a national point of View. Hence our literature, while in one aspect a branch of the noble parent literature of England, is rightly viewed, also, as the individual expression of an independent nation. Its significance to us, whose history it embodies and interprets, naturally out ranks its absolute value among the older literatures of the world. It is obvious that the limits of this survey forbid the mention of every distinguished name. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.