For nearly four centuries, the American South has been home to a vital literary tradition.The Literature of the American South reconsiders southern writing from its seventeenth-century origins to its flourishing present. Featuring the works of eighty-seven classic, contemporary, and newly recovered writers of all genres—poetry, short fiction, drama, novels, autobiography, criticism, sermons, memoirs, journals, and letters—this groundbreaking anthology sheds new light on the creative power of the southern imagination.