American Literature IReadings for English 2327

About these texts

This site holds the readings for English 2327, American Literature I. Every text here is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read, print, download and share it for free.

Where the texts come from

Each text is copied from a specific printed edition, and each reading page names that edition. We reproduce the edition as it was printed, so older spellings stay as they are: Winthrop writes “Modell,” Bradstreet writes “superiour,” and Rowlandson counts her “Removes.” A few printing conventions are modernized, because they change how a letter looks rather than how a word is spelled. The old long s (ſ) is printed as a modern s, a dash typed as two hyphens is printed as a dash, and headings printed in capitals are set in small capitals. Translated texts use a translation old enough to be in the public domain, and the page names the translator.

Some pages have notes, which appear at the end of the reading. Each note comes from the printed edition. Some notes are the author’s own, and some are an editor’s or a translator’s; where it matters, the note under the reading’s title says which.

Some readings are selections from longer works. When a selection leaves out a passage, the page marks the gap with […]. For the longer works, a selection page also links to the full text, so you can read the rest.

Texts that are still under copyright

A few readings are too recent to be in the public domain, so this site cannot copy them. Each one still has its own page here, and that page links to a site that has permission to publish the text. The Contents marks these readings with the word LINK.

Citing a reading

The numbers in the left margin count the paragraphs of a prose text and every fifth line of a poem. When you quote a reading, cite the paragraph or line numbers: (par. 12) for prose, and (lines 5–8) for a poem. Select a number to copy a link that opens the page at that paragraph or line, which is useful when you want to point a classmate to a passage. Each page also ends with a ready-made MLA citation.

Reading on a screen

The buttons and menus at the top of every page change how the text looks, and the site remembers your choices on the device you use:

Every page also prints cleanly, without the menus.

The editions

Type

The text is set in EB Garamond, by Octavio Pardo. The other two choices are Atkinson Hyperlegible, from the Braille Institute of America, and OpenDyslexic, by Abbie Gonzalez. All three are free fonts under the SIL Open Font License (licence, credits).