AMERICAN

LITERATURE

Creative Writing Report

 American Literature is the literature
written or produced in the area of the
United States & its preceding colonies.

The New England colonies were the

center of Early American literature.
 Revolutionary Period
contained political writings by...

Samuel Adams

Benjamin
Franklin

Thomas Paine
 IN THE POST WAR PERIOD,
– Thomas Jefferson’s United States Declaration of
Independence solidified his status as a key American
writer.
– With the war of 1812 and an increasing desire to
produce uniquely American literature and culture, a
number of key new literary figures emerged, perhaps
most prominently Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe.
– In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)-
TRANSCENDENTALISM
– Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)- WALDEN
– William Lloyd Garrison& Harriet Beecher Stowe-
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)- SCARLET LETTER
• Herman Melville (1819-1891)- MOBY-DICK & BILLY BUDD
• Walt Whitman (1819-1892) & Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)- America’s two greatest
19th Century poets
• Henry James (1843-1916)- TURN OF THE SCREW
• Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, and E.E. Cummings
• Mark Twain- pen named used by Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910)
• Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
• Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
• Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) 20th Century American
• Jack London (1876-1916)
• Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) NOVELIST
 American Writers
Disillusionment WW I Depression era writers
• American writers expressed disillusionment following WW I. – John Steinbeck (1902-1968) THE GRAPES OF
• F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) capture the mood of WRATH
1920’s. – Henry Miller
• John Dos Passos- wrote about the war
– Harper Lee- TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) became notable for THE
– Norman Mailer- THE NAKED AND THE DEAD
SUN ALSO RISES & A FAREWELL TO ARMS. He won the
nobel prize in Literature in 1954. (1948)
• William Faulkner (1897-1962) THE SOUND AND THE – Joseph Heller- CATCH-22 RABBIT, RUN
FURY (1960)
• Eugene O’ Neill- won 4 Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize – Philip Roth – explores Jewish Identity
• Tennessee Williams & Arthur Miller
 FAMOUS
AMERICAN
WRITERS
Willa Cather (1873-1947)
– Born in Virginia’s Back Creek Valley in
1873. She drew inspiration for some of
her most famous works- O Pioneers!
(1913); My vÅntonia (1918)- about life on
the American frontier
 James Fenimore Cooper (1789-
1851)
- Grew up in Cooperstown,
New York, is best known for
his five-book
Leatherstocking series,
including The Last of the
Mohicans, 1826. In frontier
tales, he introduces the first
American hero, NATTY
BUMPPO.
 EMILY DICKINSON
(1830-1886)
– One of the nation’s most prolific
poets. She wrote 1,800 poems
while leading a reclusive life at her
family’s home in Amherst, Mass.
Her poem is about art, gardens,
joy, love, death, and grief.
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(1803-1882)
– An ordained minister, a philosopher,
essayist and poet whose insightful
prose explored the mind of man and
his relationship with nature.
- 1836 “NATURE”
- 1841 “SELF-RELIANCE”
 WILLIAM FAULKNER
(1897-1962)
– The Nobel Prize- winning novelist and short
story writer depicted the people, history and
settings his native Mississippi in most of his
works.
– The Sound and the Fury (1929)
– Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
– Go Down Moses (1942)
– The Reivers (1962)
 Scott Fitzgerald
(1896-1940)

– A native of St. Paul, Minn. He wrote novels and

short stories about the optimism, aspirations and
excesses of the Jazz Age
– The Side of Paradise (1920)
– The Beautiful and the Damned (1922)
– The Great Gatsby (1925)
ROBERT FROSS
(1874-1963)
– Born in San Francisco, the four-time Pulitzer
Prize winner wrote much of his poetry about
rural New England.
– After Apple Picking
– Mending Wall
– Birches
– The Road not Taken
– Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
 Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
– Known for his stories about sin, guilt
and witchcraft in Puritan New
England, the Salem.
– Twice- Told Tales (1837)
– The Scarlet Letter (1850)
– The House of the Seven Gables
(1851)
Ernest Hemingway
(1899-1961)
– Considered among the best writers of his
generation.
– The Oak Park III
– The Sun also Rises (1926)
– A Farewell to Arms (1929)
– For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
– The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
 Washington Irving
(1783-1859)
– One of the earliest American
fiction writers, New York
– Rip Van Winkle (1819)
– The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
(1820)
HARPER LEE
(1926-2016)
– To Kill a Mockingbird is her only published
novel, winning the Monroeville, Ala., native
the 1961Pulitzer prize for fiction for the
best seller about 1930’s race relations in
the South.
 Jack London
(1876-1916)
– Drawing on his experiences as a sailor, gold
prospector and adventurer, San Francisco-
born, London wrote a profusion of stirring
stories, including tales about canines in the
Frozen North and voyages on the high seas
in his best-selling novels.
– The Call of the Wild (1903)
– The Sea-Wolf (1904)
– White Fang (1906)
 HERMAN MELVILLE
(1819-1891)
– Is best remembered for his 1851
masterpiece MOBY-DICK, an
epic novel about a ferocious
whale that destroys a whaling
ship, its vengeful captain and
crew.
 Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)

– authored Gone with the Wind,

the best-selling romantic novel
set in the Civil War South.
Published in 1936, the novel
won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize
and since has sold more than
30 million copies.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
(1809-1849)
– A literary critic in his time, Poe may have
been the nation’s first published horror,
mystery and science fiction writer.
– “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1843)
– “The Tell-Tale Heart”
– “The Raven” (1845)
 J.D. SALINGER
(1919-2010)
– “The Catcher in the Rye” (1951)- is
one of the best-selling American
novels of all time, with more than 65
million copies sold.
John Steinback
(1902-1968)
– The Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize
– The winning author captured the social conscience
of the nation with his captivating stories about
California’s various ethnic and immigrant groups,
migrant workers and displaced sharecroppers.
– Of Mice and Men (1937)
– The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
– East of Eden (1952)
 Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862)
– An author, philosopher, and
naturalist
– Best known for his writings about
independence, spiritual discovery,
and self-reliance
– Civil Disobedience (1849)
– Walden (1854)
MARK TWAIN (1835-1910)
– Born Samuel Clemens in Florida
– The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
– Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
– Known for his witty and satirical prose, and
the colloquial dialogue of his characters
– Has been dubbed the “Father of American
Literature”
 WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

– One of America’s greatest poets

– Whitman is best known for “Leaves of
Grass” (1855)
– “O Captain! My Captain!”- about the
assassination of President Abraham
Lincoln.