The American Writer and the European Tradition was first published in 1950. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In a series of perceptive essays by twelve scholars this volume brings a fresh viewpoint to the study of American literature. From the colonial gentlemen-scholars to contemporary poets and novelists, the American writer is seen in relation to the cultural influences that flowed from Europe to America, intermingled with native tendencies, and then flowed from America to Europe.

Three themes bind the essays together: What was the American writer's original heritage of European ideas? What ideas, moods, manners in American writers were indigenous, or mostly so, to America? And finally, what has been the influence of American letters abroad?