The roots of American literature lie in the 17th century—before there actually was an America. Early texts that originated in North American settlements throughout the 1600s consisted of religious tracts that explored the relationship between church and state, as well as works that could be referred to as “utilitarian,” since they consisted of descriptions of everyday life. These fi rsthand accounts of traders, explorers, and colonists soon gave way to more compelling material, and the canon of American literature began to take shape. This volume traces the progress of the written word in a land that itself was evolving as a nation.
The works of Jamestown leader John Smith, who wrote about his experiences in the fi rst permanent English settlement in North America, are considered to be where American literature originated. Smith’s works, which include A Description of New England (1616) and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624), were intended to interest other Englishmen in emigrating to the colonies. Other colonial leaders added their own volumes to America’s early literary history. Among the most notable is William Penn’s Brief Account of the Province of Pennsylvania (1682).
CONTENTS
Introduction: 10
Chapter 1: Early American
Literature 21
John Smith 25
The State of Verse 25
Michael Wigglesworth 26
Bay Psalm Book 29
The Story of Mary
Rowlandson 29
Chapter 2: The 18th Century 33
Great Awakening 34
Writers of the Revolution 36
Poor Richard 37
Thomas Paine 38
The New Nation 45
Notable Works of
the Period 49
Poetry 49
Drama and the Novel 49
Other Signifi cant Figures
of the Century 50
Joel Barlow 50
Robert Montgomery Bird 52
Hugh Henry
Brackenridge 53
Charles Brockden Brown 54
William Hill Brown 56
William Byrd of
Westover 57
Timothy Dwight 58
Olaudah Equiano 59
Elizabeth Graeme
Ferguson 62
Hannah Webster Foster 63
Philip Freneau 64
Sarah Kemble Knight 65
Sarah Wentworth
Apthorp Morton 67
Susanna Rowson 68
Mercy Otis Warren 69
Phillis Wheatley 70
Chapter 3: Early 19th-
Century Literature 73
Willliam Cullen Bryant 73
The North American
Review 75
Washington Irving 76
James Fenimore Cooper 79
Early Years 79
Novels 82
Cultural and Political
Involvement 85
Return to America 86
Edgar Allan Poe 100
Life and Writings 102
Appraisal 105
Sarah Helen Power
Whitman 108
Other Signifi cant Writers
of the Age 109
Maria Gowen Brooks 110
Joseph Dennie 111
Joseph Rodman Drake 112
James Hall 113
John P. Kennedy 114
James Kirke Paulding 115
John Howard Payne 116
William Gilmore Simms 117
Chapter 4: The American
Renaissance 120
New England Brahmins 121
Oliver Wendell Holmes 121
Brahmin 122
Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow 123
James Russell Lowell 127
Seba Smith 130
The Transcendentalists 130
Unitarianism 132
Ralph Waldo Emerson 132
Transcendentalism 139
Henry David Thoreau 140
Bronson Alcott 148
Orestes Augustus
Brownson 150
George Ripley 152
Jones Very 153
New England Reformers
and Historians 153
George Bancroft 154
Richard Henry Dana 157
Margaret Fuller 158
William Lloyd Garrison 160
Slave Narrative 164
Edward Everett Hale 167
Julia Ward Howe 168
John Lothrop Motley 169
Francis Parkman 170
Harriet Beecher Stowe 174
John Greenleaf Whittier 176
Hawthorne, Melville,
and Whitman 179
Nathaniel Hawthorne 181
Herman Melville 189
Walt Whitman 198
Free Verse 206
Epilogue 222
Glossary 223
Bibliography 225
Index 228
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