This highly selective list of two centuries of literary histories included in the CTT suggests the degrees to which scholars attempt to shape the tremendous variety of American literary forms, topics, and styles into themes or narratives. The titles often suggest these attempts, titles such as “fundamental principals,” “main currents,” “main lines,” or “cycles” or in national/cultural “identity” concepts as in Patrick Colm Hogan’s history since the Civil War, American Literature and American Identity (2020). “Cycles” was, in particular, an important concept for Robert Spiller, the chief editor of the influential collaborative history, Literary History of the United States (1948). A New Literary History of America (2009) represented a relatively recent departure from the attempts at cohesion by offering an extensive chronological selection of brief essays about literature, pop culture, and artifacts. There are discernable patterns in the selections of topics but no concerted effort to promote dominant narratives, themes, or identities. Approximately a year after his literary history's publication, the Co-Editor, Werner Sollors, gave an engaging talk about the making of A New Literary History of America and the creating of literary histories in general. His comments are available at: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:31902732.

Our small sampling of two centuries of histories exhibits a spectrum of roles of literary historians ranging from the creators of central themes and narratives to the exhibitors of American multiplicities. The authors, topics, and narrative threads (or lack of them) send strong messages about how American literature and culture should be defined, preserved, and taught in and beyond schools and public libraries. We include the First Printings volumes and the American Passages Study Guide as alternative forms of literary history.

(CTT does not include the titles marked with an asterisk in the Project Bibliography. We do plan to add them.)