American Lit - authors

William Bradford

- 1590-1657

- born in England; left for America for religious reasons

- Puritan Separatist

- Travelled on the Mayflower, landed in 1620 at Plymouth, Mass.

- became its governor

- work: Of Plymouth Plantation

- retellings of the stories of the early settlements, e.g. "The Starving Time"

Roger Williams

- 1603-1683

- minister, theologist, author

- argued for religious liberty (he himself went from being a Puritan to a Separatist and eventually to "unaffiliated")

- separation of state and church

- controversial figure of the early American society

- studied native ppl

- founded Rhode Island (1630s)

- Works: Letter to the Town of Providence (1655), A Key into the Language of America - on languages of native ppl

Jonathan Edwards

- 1703-1758, born in US

- theologist, preacher, philosopher; leading figure of the 1st great awakening

- "fiery" sermons, blending puritan tradition with enlightenment thought; vivid imagery of hell, judgement, salvation

- Calvinism: god's sovereignty, human sinfulness, need for forgiveness

- stressed the importance of genuine belief

- woks: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741), Religious Affections - on conversion, the Nature of True Virtue

John de Crevecoeur

- 1735-1813, born in France

- served in the French and Indian War, became a US citizen but left during the Revolutionary War

- works: Letters from an American Farmer (1782), Eighteenth-Century Travels in Pennsylvania and New York (1801)

- detailed description of the pre-revolution US

- named ideas still associated with the US (melting pot, American individualism)

Benjamin Franklin

- 1706-1790, born in US

- "First American" and a Founding Father

- autobiography, almanac (proverbs!), essays, treatises

- themes of self-reliance, moral philosophy, humour

- US independence --> drafted the constitution

- works: Poor Richard's Almanack (1732-58), the Autobiography (1790), Speech in the convention (1787)

- themes of the self-made man, enlightenment

- inspired Thoreau and Twain

- American ideal: industrious, inventive, democratic

James Madison

- 1751

- argued for religious tolerance in the Virginia declaration of Rights

- 1787 Constitutional Convention: drafted the Virginia Plan, which was the foundation of the US constitution; suggested 3 branches of the government and a system of checks and balances

- wrote the Federalist Papers with Hamilton and Jay under the pseudonym "Publius"

- 1808 became the 4th US president

Thomas Jefferson

- US secretary of state (1789), VP (1897) and the 3rd President (1801)

- principal writer of the Declaration of Independence (1776)

- slave-owner

Thomas Paine

- immigrated to the US in 1774

- writing in support for the revolution --> writer and editor of the Pennsylvania Magazie

- criticized slavery, aristocracy, promoted American unity

- 1776 wrote Common Sense and Rights of Man - promoting US independence

- most famous work: The American Crisis

Phillis Wheatley

-"1st AfAm poet", named after her owner and the ship that brought her from Africa

- educated by the Wheatley family and later emancipated

- converted to christianity

- desire for the intellectual life, translated classical works

- 1773 published Poems on Various Subjects

Phillip Freneau

-"poet of the American Revolution"

- sharp, patriotic satire against the British

- supporter of Jeffersonian republicanism, criticised Washington

- imprisoned by the british at sea

- founded the National Gazette with Madison and Jefferson

- "pioneer of American Romanticism"

Edgar Allan Poe

- orphaned and adopted by the Allans

- alcoholism and debts, military career, 2 dead wives

- inspired by Keats and Byron

- Romanticism and Gothic horror

- writer of horror, poetry (some sonnets), and some essays

- also detective fiction and pioneer of science fiction?

- satires and hoaxes

William Cullen Bryant

- 1794-1878

- poor and sick; became a lawyer, later editor of NY Review & Evening Post

- poetry collections Poems and Thirty Poems

- translated the Iliad into blankverse

- part of fireside poets and the Kinckerbocker group

- domestic themes, moral issues, traditional and nationalistic values

- focus on nature, mortality, humility, and morals

Washington Irving

- 1783-1859

- short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian

- also part of the Knickerbocker group

- Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

- wrote the 1st American short story

- contribution to American folklore/mythology - e.g. the Santa Claus figure

Nathaniel Hawthorne

- 1804-1864

- predecessors took part in the Salem witch trials

- friends with Emerson but rejected transcendentalism

- friends with Melville

- 1850 wrote the Scarlet Letter - one of the first mass-produced publications

- critical of the early puritan society

Walt Whitman

- 1819-1892

- poet, essayist, journalist

- based in Brooklyn, NYC

- support of the Free Soil Party - antislavery Democrats

- "father of free verse"

- transcendentalism, realism

- works: Leaves of Grass (1855), Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1856), O Captain! My Captain! (1865), Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (1859)

Ralph Waldo Emerson

- 1803-1882

- poet, lecturer, essayist and the leader of Transcendentalism

- early life - worked as a preacher but then toured Europe and changed his views --> transcendentalism

- centre of transcendentalism: Concord, MA

- moral individualism, ethics, self-reliance, non-conformity

- to him, every person was divine and god was everywhere and in everyone

- spiritual guidance is found by looking inwards

- works: Nature (1836), The American Scholar, Self Reliance (1841) and some poetry

Henry David Thoreau

- 1817-1862

- transcendentalist writer

- simple, self-sufficient lifestyle

- author of the transcendentalist The Dial

- works: Walden (1854), Civil Disobedience/Resistance to Civil Government

Sojourner Truth

- 1797-

- born into slavery

- abolitionist and women's rights advocate

- changed her name

- 1st black woman to win a court case against a white man to free her son

- famous speech at the Women's Rights Convention in Akorn, Ohio in 1851 - Ain't I a Woman?

- series of speeches against slavery and for women's rights

Emily Dickinson

- 1830-1886, Amherst, MA

- father was a notable politician; calvinist ideas

- except for 10 poems, unpublished during her lifetime

- wrote nearly 1800 poems, published posthumously by her sister

- reclusive life, rarely left her home; early encounters with death

- short, untitled poems, unconventual punctuation and capitalisation

- ambiguity, slant rhyme, vivid imagery

- nature, death and immortality, faith and doubt, love and identity

Herman Melville

- 1819-1891

- novelist, short story writer, poet of the American Renaissance period

- Romanticism

- spent 5 years at sea - inspired his writings, lot of seamen jargon

- Works: Moby Dick (1851, not successful at the time), Bartleby the Scrivener (1853), Timoleon (1891 - poetry)

Mark Twain

- 1835-1910

- humourist, journalist, lecturer, novelist

- grew up in pre-civil war South - met travelers, gamblers, frontier characters, enslaved ppl etc

- real name Samuel L. Clement

- grew popular through travel writing; in later years moral criticism and anti-imperialism

- writing on real-life experiences, esp. travels and childhood in the south

- works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Life on the Mississippi

Solomon Northup

- 1808-?

- a free black man who was living with his family and working as a musician

- in 1841, he was tricked and kidnapped in D.C.; he was sold into slavery and "renamed" to Platt Hamilton

- he was bought by Ford, then by the brutal Epps, for whom he worked for 10 years at a plantation

- in 1852, Epps hired Samuel Bass, who eventually helped get Northup's letters to his family in NY and arrange his freeing

- Northup couldn't get any legal justice because black men couldn't justify against white men

- his book, 12 Years a Slave, is the retelling of his story, and a crucial book for abolitionsm

- his death is a mystery

Henry James

- 1843-1916

- extensive travels through Europe --> exposure to multiple cultures and languages

- exepmted from thee Civil war because of injury --> themes of guilt, duty, detachment

- prolific writer: 20 novels, over 100 short stories

- 3 nominations for the Nobel prize in literature

- influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sarah Orne Jewett

- 1849-1909

- writer of short stories, novels and poems

- Close relationships with women -->"Boston Marriage" with Annie Adams Fields

- travelling to europe

- influenced Willa Cather

- regionalism, focus on Maine's declining seaport towns, isolation

- published in the Atlantic

- works: Deephaven, The Country of the Pointed Firs, Verses (posthumously)

William Dean Howells

- 1837-1920

- editor of the Atlantic Monthly

- works: Their Wedding Journey, A Modern Instance, Editha

- psychological realism

- focus on everyday lives of the middle-class

- social criticism - labour rights, treatment of criminals

- dry, ironic humour

Stephen Crane

- 1871-1900

- unconventional and unstable life

- war correspondend

- rejected romanticized heroism, psychological depth, experimentation: impressionism, modernism symbolism

- works: The Red Badge of Courage, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (1898)