Library of America was long a dream of the literary critic Edmund Wilson (1895–1972), who was concerned that many works by America’s best writers were either out of print or nearly impossible to find. Without a deliberate publishing effort to preserve American writing and make it widely available, many important works would disappear from the cultural conversation. As a consequence, deprived of an important part of their cultural inheritance, Americans would lose a collective sense of the country’s literary accomplishments and the vital role writing has played in our history.
