For many literary historians early nineteenth-century American literature is synonymous with the outburst of creative thought and experimentation that F. O. Matthiessen (1902–1950) called the "American Renaissance," reflected in groundbreaking works by Herman Melville (1819–1891), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), and Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Among the bold experiments of these writers were Whitman's challenge to traditional prosody, Melville's joining of metaphysical speculation to maritime narrative, and Thoreau's invention of a new genre of "poetic natural history." A set of more conservative impulses lay behind a group of nineteenth-century writers who celebrated New York's past and its local traditions. While businesspeople and entrepreneurs championed the commercial prospects of America's largest urban centers, Washington Irving (1783–1859) led a group...