Fred Lewis Pattee and American Literature

To Fred Lewis Pattee belongs the title of first professor of American Literature. In A History of American Literature (1896), The First Century of American Literature (1935), and a recently discovered, unpublished manuscript, Pattee assayed the evolution of American spirit and thought as it developed through the influences of environment, epoch, and personality. Pattee's story is related to America's increasing interest in its own literature, a self-awareness stimulated by the experience of World War I. Pattee's work set the stage for the coming to legitimacy of American Literature and for the appreciation of it on a broad, popular scale that blossomed in the 1920's.

Dr. Martine's narrative also serves as a chronicle of the growth of American education during the first part of this century, when it first became evident that universities would play a crucial role in the development of the nation's human resources.