American literature began as the first English-speaking colonists settled along the eastern seaboard of the United States. The purpose of these early texts was usually to explain the process of colonization and describe the United States to future immigrants back home in Europe.
British explorer John Smith (1580-1631 — yes, the same one from Pocahontas!) is sometimes credited as the first American author for his publications that include A True Relation of Virginia (1608) and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624). Like much literature from the colonial period, the format of these texts was non-fiction and utilitarian, focusing on the promotion of European colonization in America.
Revolutionary and Early National Literature (1775-1830)
During the American Revolution and the years of nation-building that followed, fiction writing was still uncommon in American literature. The fiction and poetry that was published remained heavily influenced by literary conventions established in Great Britain. In place of novels geared towards entertainment, writing was commonly used to further political agendas, namely the cause of independence.
Political essays emerged as one of the most important literary forms, and historical figures like Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Samuel Adams (1722-1803), and Thomas Paine (1737-1809) produced some of the most notable texts of the era. Propaganda pamphlets to influence the colonists’ cause also became an essential literary outlet. Poetry was likewise employed in the cause of the revolution. Lyrics of popular songs, such as Yankee Doodle, were often used to convey revolutionary ideas.
Post-independence, Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), and James Madison (1751-1836), continued to use the political essay to convey ideas related to the construction of new government and the future of the country. These include some of the most important texts in American history, for example, the Federalist papers (1787-1788) and, of course, The Declaration of Independence.
The literature of the late 18th and early 19th century was not all political in nature, however. In 1789, William Hill Brown was credited with the publication of the first American novel, The Power of Sympathy. This period also saw some of the first texts published by both freed and enslaved Black authors, including Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773).
Why do you think American literature in the colonial and revolutionary periods was mostly non-fiction?
19th Century Romanticism (1830-1865)
During the 19th century, American literature really began to come into its own. For the first time, American authors began to consciously distinguish themselves from their European counterparts and develop a style that was considered uniquely American. Writers like John Neal (1793-1876) spearheaded this initiative by arguing that American authors should forge a new path, not relying on borrowed literary conventions from Great Britain and other European countries.
The American novel began to flourish, and the 19th century saw the emergence of many writers that we continue to read today. By the early 19th century, Romanticism, already well-established in Europe, had arrived in the United States. Although the proliferation of Romanticism could be seen as a further continuation of European literary influence, American Romantics were distinct. They maintained their sense of individualism while invoking the Romanticism of the American landscape and focusing on the novel more than their British counterparts.
Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick (1851), is an example of this American Romanticism as a novel that is filled with emotion, the beauty of nature, and the struggle of the individual. Edger Allen Poe (1809-1849) was also one of American Romanticism’s more important writers. His poetry and short stories, including detective stories and gothic horror stories, influenced writers worldwide.
Fig. 1 - Lots of American literature was written on the old American typewriter.
The works of the poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892), sometimes referred to as the father of free verse, was also published during this period, as was the poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886).
The early- to mid-19th century also saw the emergence of Transcendentalism, a philosophical movement that Whitman belonged to, but also included essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854), a philosophical account of the author’s solitary life on the shore of Walden Pond.
By the middle of the century, during the build-up to the Civil War, more texts were written by and about both free and enslaved African Americans. Perhaps the most important of these was Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), an anti-slavery novel written by white abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.
19th Century Realism and Naturalism (1865-1914)
In the second half of the 19th century, Realism took hold in American literature as writers grappled with the aftermath of the Civil War and the ensuing changes to the nation. These authors sought to depict life realistically, telling the stories of real people living real lives in the United States.
Why do you think the Civil War and its aftermath might have inspired American writers to tell more realistic stories?
To achieve this, novels and short stories often focused on showing American life in specific pockets of the country. The authors used colloquial language and regional details to capture a sense of place. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain (1835-1910), was one of the most influential proponents of this local-color fiction. His novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) exemplified American Realism and remain today some of the most indispensable novels in the American literary canon.
Naturalism, a deterministic form of Realism that examines the effects of environment and circumstance on its characters, followed Realism towards the end of the 19th century.
20th Century Literature
With World War I and the start of the Great Depression, American literature took a decidedly gloomy turn at the beginning of the 20th century. As Realism and Naturalism transitioned into Modernism, writers began using their texts as social critiques and commentaries.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) spoke of disillusionment with the American Dream, John Steinbeck told the story of the difficulties faced by dust bowl era migrants in The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and Harlem Renaissance writers including Langston Hughes (1902-1967) and Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) used poetry, essays, novels, and short stories to detail the African American experience in the United States.
Ernest Hemingway, who was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, rose to prominence with the publication of novels such as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929).
Other American writers who have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature include William Faulkner in 1949, Saul Bellow in 1976, and Toni Morrison in 1993.
The 20th century was also an important period for drama, a form that had previously received little attention in American literature. Famous examples of American drama include Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire which premiered in 1947, closely followed by Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in 1949.
By the mid to late-20th century, American literature had become so varied that it is difficult to discuss as a unified whole. Perhaps, like the United States, American literature can be defined, not by its similarities, but rather by its diversity.
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