Introduction


Benjamin Franklin

Toni Morrison
American literature has a relatively short but colorful history. The first widely read American author was Benjamin Franklin, whose witty aphorisms and sound advice written in the yearly journal Poor Richard’s Almanack helped shape ideas of what it means to be an American. Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) was the first American to gain an international literary reputation. James Fenimore Cooper’s verbal landscapes in his Leatherstocking Tales captured the nation’s vast beauty. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson broke from poetic tradition and brought a sense of individuality to the nation’s literature. Mark Twain still captivates readers with his unique—and uniquely American—humor and insight. The modernists of the 1920s and 1930s produced such talents as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Today, writers like Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy continue to make American literature relevant and exciting.

Essential Facts

  1. “A penny saved is a penny earned” and “God helps those who help themselves” are just two of Benjamin Franklin’s famous pieces of advice.
  2. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is credited, in part, with igniting the Civil War and ending slavery. Upon meeting Stowe, Abraham Lincoln purportedly said, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War!”
  3. Criticism of the United States has formed its identity as much as celebration has. The authors John Steinbeck and John Dos Passos stand out for their keen perception of U.S. society.
  4. Robert Frost is the most anthologized American poet of the twentieth century.
  5. American literature in the twentieth-first century continues to include more ethnically diverse authors, including Amy Tan, Alice Walker, N. Scott Momaday, and Oscar Hijuleos.
 

Recommended Resources

  1. American Literary Criticism in the Nineteenth Century (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism)
  2. Literature: An American Voice Emerges - 1910's The Arts
  3. Mark Twain (Critical Survey of Short Fiction)
  4. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Study Guide (eNotes) - Robert Frost
  5. The Old Man and the Sea Study Guide (eNotes) - Ernest Hemingway

All Resources

Display as: Categories, List
  1. Alice Sebold
  2. Alice Walker
  3. American Literary Criticism in the Nineteenth Century (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism)
  4. American Literature in the 1960’s (The Sixties in America)
  5. American Naturalism in Short Fiction (Short Fiction Criticism)
  6. Arthur Miller
  7. Billy Budd Study Guide (eNotes) - Herman Melville
  8. Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism)
  9. Death in American Literature (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism: Vol. 89)
  10. Edgar Allan Poe
  11. Edith Wharton
  12. Emily Dickinson
  13. Ernest Hemingway
  14. Ernest Hemingway (Contemporary Literary Criticism)
  15. Ernest Hemingway (Contemporary Literary Criticism: Vol. 13)
  16. Ernest Hemingway (Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century)
  17. Ernest Hemingway (Masters Guide)
  18. Ernest Hemingway (Short Story Criticism)
  19. Eugene O'Neill
  20. F. Scott Fitzgerald
  21. Frederick Douglass
  22. Harper Lee
  23. Henry James
  24. Herman Melville
  25. Herman Melville (Cyclopedia of World Authors)
  26. Huckleberry Finn Study Guide (eNotes) - Mark Twain
  27. J. D. Salinger
  28. Jack Kerouac
  29. James Baldwin
  30. Literature: An American Voice Emerges - 1910's The Arts
  31. Mark Twain
  32. Mark Twain (Critical Survey of Short Fiction)
  33. Moby Dick Study Guide (eNotes) - Herman Melville
  34. Nathaniel Hawthorne
  35. Ralph Ellison
  36. Robert Frost
  37. Robert Frost (Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century)
  38. somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond Study Guide (eNotes) - e. e. cummings
  39. Song of Solomon Study Guide (eNotes) - Toni Morrison
  40. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Study Guide (eNotes) - Robert Frost
  41. Tennessee Williams
  42. The American Dream Examined in Literature
  43. The Deerslayer Study Guide (eNotes) - James Fenimore Cooper
  44. The Old Man and the Sea Study Guide (eNotes) - Ernest Hemingway
  45. The Scarlet Letter Summary and Study Guide - Nathaniel Hawthorne
  46. The Sea in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism)
  47. The Slave Trade in British and American Literature
  48. Toni Morrison
  49. Toni Morrison (Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century)
  50. W. E. B. Du Bois
  51. William Faulkner
  52. Zora Neale Hurston