A SHORT HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, VOL. 1: FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE,

by Burton E. Martin '33, Kairyuod, Kanda-Ni-shikicho, Tokyo. 178 pp.

Mr. Martin is teaching American literature at Tohoku University, Japan. When he first went to Japan about two years ago he found that there was a definite interest in American literature on the part of Japanese students but that their knowledge of the subject was very much limited. So he decided to write a brief popular history of American literature which would be of value, especially to students studying the same in Japanese universities. The author's approach is partly biographical. In a thin volume of this sort the author necessarily can give little space to the various authors considered. He discusses first of all John Smith, gives a brief account of the Mathers, William Byrd, Jonathan Edwards, Roger Williams, Anne Bradstreet and other writers, all of these of the Colonial period; and then discusses for the Revolutionary period Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Philip Freneau, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Brockden Brown, Henry Breckenridge and others. This brief volume seems very well adapted to the purpose for which it is written and will undoubtedly be used a great deal by Japanese teachers and others in Japan interested in American literature.