PAPERBACK ISBN: 0-88258-061-2    $35.95

466 pages; 6 x 9 inches

A Reader and Course Guide

Edited by Philip Butcher

Volume I of The Minority Presence in American Literature, 1600–1900 is a comprehensive selection of major writings that explores the experiences of indigenous people and slaves, immigrants and strangers, in early America. This anthology provides both specialists and generalists with authoritative, enlightened guidance and an unparalleled choice of readings by authors such as Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau. Editor Philip Butcher presents many striking examples of an incipient and purely American literary tradition and brings to the foreground the often-ignored influence of people of color in shaping American literature. Butcher includes in this volume three introductory essays that establish standards for appraising the selections both as literature and social documents. The essays provide readers with a disciplinary approach to the study of the representation of minorities in American literature. The introductions, along with listings of addi­tional readings and study questions at the end of each selection, make this volume an invaluable reference for students of American literature and American studies.

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