Firmly grounded in the core strengths that have made it the best-selling undergraduate survey in the field, The Norton Anthology of American Literature has been revitalized in this Seventh Edition through the collaboration between three new period editors and five seasoned ones. Under Nina Baym's direction, the editors have considered afresh each selection and the entire apparatus to make the Shorter Edition an even better teaching tool for the one-semester and brief two-semester courses.

"In this Shorter Seventh Edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, we offer the most extensive revision in our long publishing history, with the entire apparatus rethought, from headnotes to footnotes to section introductions to bibliographies. At the same time, we have continued to subscribe to three aims present since the anthology's inception: first, to present a rich and substantial enough variety of works to enable teachers to build their own courses according to their own ideals (thus, teachers are offered more authors and more selections than they will probably use in any one course); second, to make the anthology self-sufficient by featuring many works in their entirety along with extensive selections for individual authors; third, to balance traditional interests with developing critical concerns in a way that points to a coherent literary history."?From the Preface