Book excerpt: The American Standard is an American Literature textbook designed specifically for high school teachers and college professors who teach the classics. Arranged chronologically, the anthology traces the literary development of the United States from colonial times through the mid-1900s; the text emphasizes the works of major American writers such as Irving, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Douglass, Whitman, Twain, Washington, DuBois, Chopin, Cather, Frost, Eliot, and many others.