Author Description

Focuses on the birth of American literature during the precolonial period through the beginnings of imaginative writing. The first three lessons focus on Native American oral tradition, featuring Cherokee and Navajo legends. Lesson four begins the dominance of colonial nonfiction with famous voices such as John Smith and Benjamin Franklin. Journals, letters, autobiographies, and the like give students a primary-source view of early America, the revolution, and westward expansion. Volume one closes with the foundation of creative writing-largely thanks to Washington Irving-and Edgar Allan Poe's stories of horror and mystery. (CFL741)