Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > American Humor Writing - Overviews

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The London and Westminster Review

SOURCE: "Yankeeana: Slick, Crockett, Downing, Etc.," in The London and Westminster Review, Vol. XXXII, No. 1, December, 1838, pp. 136-45.

[In the following excerpt from a review of several volumes of American humor writing, a commentator from The London and Westminster Review makes the claim that the United States has begun to create a literature of its own.]

These books show that American literature has ceased to be exclusively imitative. A few writers have appeared in the United States, who, instead of being European and English in their styles of thought and diction, are American—who, therefore, produce original sounds instead of far-off echoes,—fresh and vigorous pictures instead of comparatively idealess copies. A portion of American literature has become national and original, and, naturally enough, this portion of it is that which in all countries is always most...

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Overviews
4. The Old Southwest
5. Broader Impacts
6. Women Humorists
7. Further Reading
8. Copyright