PREFACE.
This volume is the first of a series designed to present a survey of "Western Literature—to make known who have been, and who are the poets, orators, and prose-writers of the States[1] which comprise what is properly known, in American history and geography, as The West; and to preserve, in a form convenient for reference, their most characteristic productions.
The Poets and Poetry of the West has been prepared upon a plan contemplating not only the republication of poems which have become celebrated, but a fair representation of what may, not inappropriately, be considered the respectable poetical literature of the great Central Valley of the United States. It contains selections, Avith biographical notices, from the writings of ninety-seven men and fifty-five women, of whom sixty are, or at the time of their decease were, residents of Ohio; twenty-three of Indiana; fourteen of Kentucky; thirteen of Illinois; five of Michigan; four of Wisconsin; three of Missouri; two of Iowa; two of Minnesota; one of Kansas. Among these poets, sixty-nine are native to the geographical division of the American Confederacy in which their fortunes are cast: to Ohio, thirty-nine; to Kentucky, fifteen; to Indiana, thirteen; to Michigan, one; to Illinois, one.
The others belong, by birth, as follows: Fifteen to New York, twelve to Pennsylvania, eight to Massachusetts, eight to Connecticut, seven to New Hampshire, four to Maine, four to Maryland, three to IMississippi, three to Tennessee, three to Vermont, three to Virginia, two to New Jersey, two to South Carolina, one to Delaware, one to Rhode Island, one to the District of Columbia, and four to Great Britain. The nativity of three is unknown. Of the one hundred and fifty-two persons whose places of birth and residence are thus analyzed, only twenty-eight[2] are known to be deceased.
- ↑ Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Micliigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas.
- ↑ John M. Harney, Thomas Peirce, Julia L. Dumont, Micah P. Flint, Charles Hammond, Wm. R. Schenck, Louisa P. Smith, Elijah P. Lovejoy, Otway Curry, Harvey D. Little, James H. Perkins, Hugh Peters, Thomas H. Shreve, Charles A. Jones, Amelia B. Welby, Edward A. M'Laughlin, Laura M. Thurston, Eleanor P. Lee, Horace S. Minor, Emeline H. Johnson, Mary E. Fee Shannon, Benjamin T. Gushing, John G. Dunn, George Y. Welborn, Mary Wilson Betts, M. Louisa Chitwood, John T. Swartz, Harriet M. Howe.
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