PREFACE.

IE absence of a good many names from this

THE

volume, which will be very naturally looked for in any collection of American Authors, making the slightest pretensions to completeness, will, of course, be a subject of remark, and demands an explanation.

On making up a list of the authors in whom the public were imagined to feel a sufficient degree of interest to entitle them to a place in a work like this, they were found to be too numerous to be all included in one volume. Moreover, as it required a considerable length of time to procure drawings of their homes, it would have caused the publication to be delayed nearly a year, if an attempt had been made to put them all between the same pair of covers. It was determined, therefore, to divide our

Valhalla into two compartments, and to avoid the appearance of partiality, and give equal value to both, some of the greater names have been reserved for our second volume, which it is intended to publish the succeeding year.

Although there are no Abbotsfords, which have been reared from the earnings of the pen, among our authors' homes, yet we feel a degree of pride in showing our countrymen how comfortably housed many of their favorite authors are, in spite of the imputed neglect with which native talent has been treated. Authorship in America, notwithstanding the want of an international copy-right which has been so sorely felt by literary laborers, has at last become a profession which men may live by.

All the views in this volume have been engraved from original drawings made expressly for the work, with the exception of Otsego Hall, the residence of Cooper, and Mr. Webster's residence at Marshfield, which are from daguerreotypes, and not less authentic than the others.