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Rh writers of imaginative literature who have been most emphasized by our literary historians, we have attempted to do a new service by giving a place in our record to departments of literature, such as travels, oratory, memoirs, which have lain somewhat out of the main tradition of literary history but which may be, as they are in the United States, highly significant of the national temper. In this task we have been much aided by the increasing number of monographs produced within the past quarter of a century upon aspects of American literary history. Such collections as A Library of American Literature, edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman and Ellen M. Hutchinson in 1889–90, and the Library of Southern Literature (1908–13), compiled by various Southern men of letters, have been indispensable.

We regret that ill health has deprived us of the collaboration of Professor George E. Woodberry, to whose taste and judgment all students of American literature are deeply indebted; and that the pressure of his military duties keeps M. Léon Bazalgette from appearing among our contributors, as was originally planned. For many details of the work we owe much to the unsparing assistance of Mrs. Carl Van Doren, who has prepared the index.

1 June, 1917.