Beginning with the first American ballad at the time of Elizabeth I, this wide-ranging 1901 survey covers the Puritans; colonial literature; nationalism; women writers; the "Knickerbocker School;" poets of nature, sentiment, and passion; humor and satire; idyllic and lyric poets; idealists and realists; anti-slavery verse; and many authors, including William Cullen Bryant, Longfellow, and Whitman.