Based on the five volumes of Brooks' Makers and finders: a history of the writer in America, 1800-1915. Reprint of the 1956 edition published by Dutton, New York. Includes index. Pt.1. The world of Washington Irving: Philadelphia in 1800. The land of Yankees. The Dutch along the Hudson. Washington Irving. Irving and Scott. James Fenimore Cooper. Later Knickerbockers. The West. Frontier life contributes to national literature. The South. Edgar Allan Poe. William Cullen Bryant. Painters and writers. Pt.2. The flowering of New England: Boston and Cambridge. New England minds lead the nation. Widening horizons. New England historians fulfill vital function. The hour had struck for poets. Young Boston goes to sea. Transcendentalism explores the inner life. The sage of Concord. Henry Thoreau. Intellectual whirlpools. Brook Farm. The Alcott family. Nathaniel Hawthorne. The anti-slavery writers. Whittier, poet-laureate of New England. Uncle Tom's Cabin. James Russell Lowell. Literary Boston. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Saturday club. Pt.3. The times of Melville and Whitman: New York in the fifties. Tales of the travellers. Herman Melville. Melville's Moby Dick. Melville and Whitman. Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman: the image of the poet. The far west. The world of Bret Harte. Cowboys bandits and books. The midwest. Sidney Lanier. Negro folklore charms the nation. Regional writing. George W. Cable. Mark Twain. Pt.4. New England, Indian summer: Henry Adams. Practically triumphant. The rise of realism. Writers strive for a better world. The problem of Europe in American breasts. Henry James. Emily Dickinson. Women writers gain in influence. Poetry in decline. Pt.5. The confident years: The ghetto a school for writers. Stephen Crane. Reformers, reporters, writers. O. Henry. New York high society. Chicago. The west's new voices. Theodore Dreiser. Small town. Willa Cather. Saving the cowboy from oblivion. San Francisco in the nineties. Jack London. Ellen Glasgow. The southwest. Gertrude Stein. Mencken of Baltimore. Sinclair Lewis. The imagists. Eugene O'Neill. Poetic renaissance.