Preface to the Second Edition

This open-access anthology of Early American Literature includes multiple works that reveal moments in the exploration, colonization, and development of what eventually became the United States of America, and then afterward, up until the Civil War. The primary texts in this collection are all old enough to exist in the public domain. Some are easily attainable through other sources. Others were not as easy to access and required significant processing to put them in a readable format. A handful are currently not available in any other anthology.

In its first edition, this textbook was intended for my course at Scottdale Community College, ENH 241: American Literature before 1865. That edition included only literature originally written in English. There were no introductory materials because students in that class were assigned to produce those introductory materials for an assignment.

This second edition includes multiple other works, including many that were not originally in English. It also includes introductions to the authors, many of which were produced by students over the years in response to the above-mentioned Anthology Introduction assignment in ENH 241 and included with their permission. Here is a brief description of that assignment:

Compose a 750-2000-word introductory essay about any one of the authors from The Renewable Anthology of Early American Literature and their works. (It does not have to be an author we cover in a lesson, as long as they are in the textbook). Consider your task to be that of a contributor to a literature anthology that will include your assigned authors in the text. Your aim is to introduce the author and the significance of their works to interested students.

Your essay should include biographical information, historical context, critical theory/analysis and interpretation applied to the author’s work, and commentary on any significant or intriguing elements or impact of the work (social, political, cultural, etc.). Also include study or essay questions or other formative assessments to gauge future students’ grasp of the subject matter.

Not all introductions included in this second edition were composed in my class, however. Other author introductions come from the open-access literature anthologies Becoming America: An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, edited by Wendy Kurant, PhD, or Writing the Nation: A Concise Introduction to American Literature 1865 to Present, edited by Amy Berke, Robert Bleil, Jordan Cofer and Doug Davis, both available through a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, as this textbook is. Other sources for introductions include the National Park Service, the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica, and Wikipedia. Primary sources come from Wikisource or Internet Archive, and images come from Wikimedia Commons.

My hope is that this collection allows each new generation of students to have unfettered access to the great literary works of early America and to see all they reveal about the foundation of our country.

Jared L. Aragona, Ph.D. (2024)