The best-selling survey of American literature from its beginnings to the present day is now brought to readers in an innovative revision. Here are the classic writers in the American tradition--from Wheatley and Franklin to Poe and Dickinson, to Cather, Hemingway, and Ellison. Fifteen major works are included in their entirety, among them Nature, Song of Myself, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Daisy Miller: A Study, Long Day's Journey into Night, A Streetcar Named Desire, and "Howl." Here too are contemporary and newly recovered writers and traditions--from Native American Trickster tales to modernists Carlos Bulosan and Claude McKay, to contemporary authors Toni Morrison, Billy Collins, and Sandra Cisneros. Helpful introductions, headnotes, bibliographies, maps, and timelines accompany the texts.