In answer to a demand from many teachers in schools and colleges, there has been added to this volume representative selections from the writers of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods of American Literature,-material to the extent of 114 pages. Every phase of the era of our beginnings has been touched and every selection has been chosen with a view of its fitness for class use. Enough, it is believed, is comprehended in this new material to furnish all that is necessary for a survey course in early American Literature. The classified index of the earlier volume has been dropped and in its place and for insertion at the front of the book has been prepared a complete outline for classes in literary forms with all the materials in the volume carefully classified by types. The book therefore may be used as a handbook for courses in TYPES OF LITERATURE, in SHORT STORY courses (there are thirty-five sketches and short stories arranged in the order of the evolution of the form), in THE ESSAY (more examples of the form are here found than in most collections used as text-books), and in THE TECHNIQUE OF POETRY.

The author would take this opportunity to thank those teachers who so kindly have furnished him with lists of errors in the first edition of the book. In such a mass of material errors are difficult to avoid, but the careful scrutiny of hundreds of teachers who have used the volume has found, it is believed, the greater part of them. Every suggestion that has been offered by teachers has been carefully weighed and if possible followed, all errors so far as detected have been painstakingly removed, and everything practical has been done to make it an authoritative and usable handbook both for teachers and students.

State College, Pa.

March 22, 1922.