This book has been prepared for publication as No. 4000, a “Memorial Volume,” of the “Tauchnitz Edition.” Perhaps it may be well to explain to American readers what the “Tauchnitz Edition” is and what a “Memorial Volume” is in this collection.

The “Collection of British Authors,” or, as it is more popularly known on the European Continent, the “Tauchnitz Edition,” was instituted in 1841, at Leipsic, by one of the most distinguished of German publishers, the late Baron Bernhard Tauchnitz, whose son is now at the head of the house. The father records that he was “incited to the undertaking by the high opinion and enthusiastic fondness which I have ever entertained for English literature: a literature springing from the selfsame root as the literature of Germany, and cultivated in the beginning by the same Saxon race.... As a German-Saxon it gave me particular pleasure to promote the literary interest of my Anglo-Saxon cousins, by rendering English literature as universally known as possible beyond the limits of the British Empire.” In another place, Baron Tauchnitz describes “the mission” of his Collection to be the “spreading and strengthening the love for English literature outside of England and her Colonies.”

Baron Tauchnitz early felt that the general title of the series, “Collection of British Authors,” was a misnomer, which might even give offence to an important branch of the English-speaking race; for, though Bulwer and Dickens led off in the Collection, “Pelham” being the first volume issued and “The Pickwick Papers” the second, the fourth volume, added at the beginning of the second year of publication, in 1842, was Fenimore Cooper’s “The Spy,” followed in the same year by a second volume of the same author. Furthermore, the year 1843 opened with Washington Irving’s “Sketch Book,” immediately followed by a third novel by Cooper; and, though it was not till 1850 that another American work gained admittance into this charmed circle, not fewer than three of Irving’s books succeeded one another in the single twelvemonth. In 1852, Hawthorne was welcomed with “The Scarlet Letter” and Mrs. Stowe with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; from that time on, scarcely a year has passed without some new American book being included in the Collection, and under the present routine each year’s issue, comprising some seventy-five volumes, includes several American works.

In fact, the representation of American authors in the “Tauchnitz Edition” is now so considerable that the list calls for a place by itself at the end of this volume, where it presents an interesting evidence of the growth of the popularity of American literature in Europe. The reader will notice that there are cases where some of the best works of an author are not included in the “Tauchnitz Edition.” The cause of these omissions is sometimes other than taste or choice. But the catalogue is suggestive just as it stands.

The “Memorial Volumes” form a little series of special issues published at turning-points. This Manual has been made a Memorial Volume out of compliment to American literature and is dedicated, with his permission, to President Roosevelt. In this way, the present Baron Tauchnitz has striven to show his high appreciation of the group of American authors in the Edition, and to follow in the footsteps of his high-minded father. In his Preface to the first Memorial Volume, No. 500, entitled “Five Centuries of the English Language and Literature,” being a collection of characteristic specimens of British writers from Wycliffe to Thomas Gray, the first Baron Tauchnitz refers to the literature “on the other side of the Atlantic,” and says in a footnote to this Preface: “A glance at my list of authors will show that America has contributed no small part to my Collection. Nevertheless I did not deem it necessary to alter the title under which my undertaking was started, as I thought that the term ‘British Authors’ might not improperly be applied to writers employing the language common to the two nations on either side of the Atlantic.” No. 1000—Tischendorf’s edition of The New Testament—is dedicated “to my English and American Authors,” while in No. 2000—“Of English Literature in the Reign of Victoria, with a Glance at the Past”—the author, the late Professor Henry Morley, who long filled the chair of English Literature at the University of London, opens his Preface with these words: “When Baron Tauchnitz asked me to write this little book, he also wished me to include in it some record of the literature of America. But Baron Tauchnitz cordially agreed to a suggestion that the kindred literature of America, though we are proud in England to claim closest brotherhood with our fellow-countrymen of the United States, has a distinct interest of its own, large enough for the whole subject of another memorial volume, and that an American author would best tell the story of its rise and progress.”

Another work in the “Tauchnitz Edition,” but not a Memorial Volume, offered a good opportunity to present American literature to the attention of the European public. I refer to the two volumes of the late George L. Craik, sometime Professor of English Literature at Queen’s College, Belfast, entitled “A Manual of English Literature, and of the History of the English Language, from the Norman Conquest; with Numerous Specimens.” Here again no space is given to our authors, though they are mentioned once in a reference to “the leading poetical writers who have arisen in the American division of the English race, two or three of whom may be reckoned as of the second rank, though certainly not one as of the first.”

Towards the end of 1893, as the time was approaching for the issuing of No. 3000, and again, in 1900, when No. 3500 was soon to be reached, I hinted to my Leipsic friends the peculiar fitness of singling out one of these possible Memorial Volumes and making it a sketch of our literary life, in accordance with the promise made in Professor Morley’s Preface. I even suggested that Professor Moses Coit Tyler, who had then just completed his great work on our literature, be invited to perform the task. The last letter I ever received from this genial spirit, dated from the Isle of Wight, September 5, 1897, contains this passage: “I appreciate the honour you have done me in mentioning my name to Baron Tauchnitz, in connection with a proposed volume on American literature.” Nothing, however, came of this; and when, some ten years later, I was invited to prepare the present volume, my first thought was to utilise the magnum opus of Professor Tyler, who had, in the meanwhile, passed away. So my chief care has been the first two chapters, drawn, with the kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, and of the family of Professor Tyler, from his four authoritative volumes, “A History of American Literature during the Colonial Period,” and “The Literary History of the American Revolution,” to which Sir George Otto Trevelyan refers in his “American Revolution” as “a remarkable specimen of the historical faculty.”

The chief labour in the preparation of this volume has fallen upon my friends and collaborators of the Department of English and the Sage School of Philosophy of my Alma Mater. Acknowledgment is, further, particularly due to Professors J.M. Hart and M.W. Sampson, also of Cornell University, for valuable suggestions and considerable help. The work of seeing the American edition through the press has been done by Professors Northup and Cooper.

Theodore Stanton.

Paris, September, 1908.