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AMERICAN LITERATURE
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See also:AMERICAN LITERATURE . The earliest books which are
commonly described as the beginnings of American literature
were written by men See also:born and bred in See also:England;
undivided See also:part of See also:English literature, belonging to the See also:province of exploration and See also:geographical description and entirely similar in See also:matter and See also:style to other See also:works of voyagers and colonizers that illustrate the expansion of England., They contain the materials of See also:history in a See also:form of See also:good Elizabethan narrative, always vigorous in See also:language, often vivid and picturesque. See also: The product, however, is now an indistinguishable See also:mass, and titles and authors alike are found only in antiquarian See also:lore. The 1 See also:Huntington v. Attrill, 146 See also:United States Reports, 657. 2 See also:Great Western See also:Telegraph See also:Company v. Purdy, 162 United States arrived before 164o had established the • principles of the state, and their will and ideas remained dominant after the Restoration as before. It was a theocratic state controlled by the See also:clergy, and yet containing the principle of See also:liberty. The second and third generations born on the See also:soil, nevertheless, showed some decadence; notwithstanding the effort to provide against intellectual See also:isolation and See also:mental poverty by the See also:foundation of Harvard See also:College, they See also:felt the effects of their situation across the See also:sea and on the See also:borders of a See also:wilderness. The See also:people were a hard-faring folk and engaged in a material struggle to establish the plantations and develop See also:commerce on the sea; their other See also:life was in See also:religion soberly practised and intensely felt. They were a people of one See also:book, in the true sense,— the See also:Bible; it was the See also:organ of their mental life as well as of their spiritual feelings. For them, it was in the See also:place of the higher literature. But See also:long See also:resident there in the See also:strip between the sea and the See also:forest, cut off from the See also:world and consigned to hard labour and to spiritual ardour's, they See also:developed a fanatical See also:temper; their religious life hardened and darkened; intolerance and superstition See also:grew. See also:Time, nevertheless, ripened new changes, and the See also:colony was to be brought back from its religious seclusion into the normal paths of See also:modern development. The sign was contained, perhaps, most clearly in the See also:change effected in the new See also:charter granted by See also: There the New England of the 17th See also:century is displayed. His numerous other works still further amplify the period, and taken all together his writings best illustrate the contents of Puritanism in New England. The See also:power of the clergy was waning, but even in the See also:political See also:sphere it was far from extinction, and it continued under its See also:scheme of church See also:government to guard jealously the principles of liberty. In John See also:Wise's (1652-1725) Vindication of the Government of New England Churches (1717) a precursor of the Revolution is felt. It was in another sphere, however, that Puritanism in New England was to reach its height, intellectually and spiritually alike, in the brilliant See also:personality of See also:Jonathan See also:Edwards (1703-1758), its last great product. He was See also:free of affairs, and lived essentially the private life of a thinker. He displayed in youth extraordinary precocity and varied intellectual curiosity, and showed at the same See also:early time a temperament of spirtual sensitiveness and religious ideality which suggests the youth of a poet rather than of a logician. It was not without a struggle that he embraced sincerely the Calvinistic scheme of divine See also:rule, but he was able to reconcile the See also:doctrine in its most fearful forms with the serenity and warmth of his own spirit; for his soul at all times seems as lucid as his mind; and his affections were singularly See also:tender and refined. He served as See also:minister to the church at See also:Northampton; and, driven from that See also:post, he was for eight years a missionary to the See also:Indians at See also:Stockbridge; finally he was made president of See also:Princeton College, where after a few See also:weeks' incumbency he died. The works upon which his fame is founded are See also:Treatise concerning the Religious Affections' (1746), On the Freedom of the Will (1754), Treatise on See also:Original , See also:Sin (r 758). They exhibit extraordinary reasoning See also:powers and place him among the most eminent theologians. He contributed by his See also:preaching great inspiring force to the revival, known as " the Great Awakening," which swept over the dry and formal Puritanism of the See also:age and was its last great See also:flame. In him New England See also:idealism had come to the See also:birth. He illustrates, better than all others, the power of Puritanism as a spiritual force; and in him only did that power reach intellectual expression in a memorable way for the larger world. The ecclesiastical literature of Puritanism, abundant as it was, produced no other work of power; nor did the Puritan patronage of literature prove fruitful in other See also:fields. If Puritan-ism was thus infertile, it nevertheless prepared the soil. It impressed upon New England the See also:stamp of the mind; the entire community was by its means intellectually as well as morally bred; and to its training and the predisposition it established in the See also:genius of the people may be ascribed the respect for the book which,has always characterized that See also:section, the serious temper and See also:elevation of its later literature and the spiritual quality of the See also:imagination which is so marked a quality of its authors. The secularization of life in New England, which went on concurrently with the decline' of the clergy in social power, was incidental to colonial growth. The practical force of See also:Franklin. the people had always been strong; material pros- , , . perity increased and a powerful class of merchants grew up; public questions multiplied in variety and gained in iriiportance. The affairs of the world had definitely obtained the upper See also:hand. The new spirit found its representative in the great figure of See also:Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), who, born in See also:Boston, early emigrated to See also:Philadelphia, an See also:act which in itself may be thought to forecast the See also:transfer of the centre of See also:interest to the See also:west and See also:south and specifically to that See also:city where the See also:congress was to sit. Franklin was a printer, and the books he circulated are an See also:index to the uses of See also:reading in his See also:generation. Practical works, such as almanacs, were plentiful, and it is characteristic that Franklin's name is, in literature, first associated with Poor Richard's Almanack (1,732). The literature of the 18th century outside of New England continued to be constituted of works of exploration, description, colonial affairs, with some sprinkling of crude See also:science and doctrines of See also:wealth; but it yields no distinguished names or remembered titles. Franklin's character subsumes the spirit of it. In him See also:thrift and benevolence were See also:main constituents; scientific curiosity of a useful sort and invention distinguished him; after he had secured a competence, public interests filled his mature years. In him was the See also:focus of the federating impulses of the time, and as the representative of the colonies in England and during the Revolution in See also:France, he was in his proper place as the greatest See also:citizen of his country. He was, first of men, broadly interested in all the colonies, and in his mind the future began to be comprehended in its true See also:perspective and See also:scale; and for these reasons to him properly; belongs the See also:title of " the first American." The type of his character set forth in the Autobiography (,817) was profoundly American and prophetic of the See also:plain people's ideal of success in a See also:democracy. It is by his character and career rather than by his works or even by his great public services that he is remembered; he is a type of the citizen-man. Older than his companions, and plain while they were of an aristocratic stamp, he greatens over them in the popular mind as age greatens over youth; but it was these companions who were to See also:lay the See also:foundations of the political literature of America. With the increasing political life lawyers as a class had naturally come into prominence as spokesmen and debaters. A See also:young generation of orators sprang up, of whom See also: The Revolutsth-ce°- tion in passing struck out some See also:sparks of balladry and wry See also:poetry See also:song, but the See also:inspiration of the spirit of See also:nationality
and was first felt in poetry by See also: The expansion of its territory over the See also:continental See also:area brought new local diversity and prolonged the contrasts of border See also:con- ditions with those of the long-settled communities. 'This state of affairs was reflected in the See also:capital fact that there was no metro- politan centre in which the tradition and forces of the nation were concentrated. Washington was a centre of political See also:administration; but that was all. The nation grew slowly, indeed, into consciousness of its own existence; but it was with- out united history, without national traditions of See also:civilization and 1. 27culture, and it was committed to the untried See also:idea of democracy. It was founded in a new faith; yet at the moment that it See also:pro-claimed the equality of men, its own social structure and See also:habit north and south contradicted the declaration, not merely by the fact of See also:slavery, but by the life of its classes. The south long remained oligarchic; in the north See also:aristocracy slowly melted away. The coincidence of an economic opportunity: with a philosophic principle is the See also:secret of the career of American democracy in its first century. The vast resources of. an undeveloped country gave this opportunity to the individual, while the nation was pledged by its fundamental idea to material prosperity for the masses, popular See also:education and the common welfare, as the supreme test of government. In this labour, subduing the new world to See also:agriculture, See also:trade and manufactures, the forces of the nation were spent, under the complication of maintaining the will of the people as the directing power; the subjugation of the soil and experience in popular government are the main facts of American history. In the course of this task the practice of the See also:fine arts was hardly more than an incident. When anyone thinks of See also:Greece, he thinks first of her arts; when anyone thinks of America, he thinks of her arts last. Literature, in the sense of the printed word, has had a great career in America; as the vehicle of use, books, See also:journals, literary communication, educational works and See also:libraries have filled the See also:land; nowhere has the power of the printed word ever been so great, nowhere has the man of literary genius ever had so broad an opportunity to affect the minds of men contemporaneously. But, in the See also:artistic sense, literature, at most, has been locally illustrated by a few eminent names. The most obvious fact with regard to this literature is that—to adopt a convenient word—it has been regional. It has flourished in parts of the country, very distinctly marked, and is in each See also:case affected by its environment and local culture; if it incorporates;national elements at times, it seems to See also:graft them on its,own stock. The growth of literature in these favoured soils was slow and humble. There was no outburst of genius, no sudden See also:movement, no See also:renaissance; but very gradually a step was taken in advance of the last generation, as that had advanced upon its forefathers. The first books of true excellence were experiments; they seem almost accidents. The cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia were lettered communities; they possessed imported books, professional classes, men of education and See also:taste. The tradition of literature was strong, especially in New England; there were readers used to the polite letters of the past. It was, however, in the main the past of Puritanism, both in England and at See also:home, and of the 8th century in general, on which they were bred, with a See also:touch ever growing stronger of the new See also:European romanticism. All the philosophic ideas of the 18th century were current. What was most lacking was a See also:standard self-applied by original writers; and in the See also:absence of a great national centre of See also:standards and traditions, and amid the poverty of such small local centres as the writers were bred in, they sought what they desired, not in England, not in any one country nor in any one literature, but in the solidarity of literature itself, in the See also:republic of letters, the world-state itself ,—the See also:master-works of all European lands; they became either actual pilgrims on See also:foreign soil or pilgrims of the mind in fireside travels. The foreign influences that thus entered into American literature are obvious and make a large part of its history; but the fact here brought out is that European literature and experience stood to American writers in lieu of a national centre; it was there that both standard and tradition were found.
American literature first began to exist for the larger world in the persons of Washington See also:Irving (1785--1859) and James Fenimore See also: All three men were not supremely endowed; they do not show the See also:passion of genius for its work which marks the great writers; they were, like most American writers, men with the literary temperament, characteristically gentlemen, who essayed literature with varying power. If the quality of this early literature is to be appreciated truly, the fact of its provenance from a society whose cultivation was See also:simple and normal, a provincial See also:bourgeois society of a prosperous democracy, 'must be See also:borne in mind. It came, not from the people, but from the best classes developed under preceding conditions. Irving all his life was in the eyes of his countrymen, whatever their See also:pride might be in him, more a travelled See also:gentleman than one Irving. of themselves. He had come home to end his days at Sunnyside by the See also:Hudson, but he had won his fame in foreign fields. In his youth the beginnings of his literary work were most humble—light contributions to the See also:press. He was of a most social nature, warm, refined, humorous, a man belonging to the See also:town. He was not seriously disposed, idled much, and surprised his See also:fellow-citizens suddenly by a See also:grotesque History of New York (1809), an extravaganza satirizing the Dutch element of the province. He discovered in See also:writing this work his talent for See also:humour and also one part of his literary theme, the Dutch tradition; but he did not so convince himself of his powers as to continue, and it was only after the failure of his commercial interests that, being thrown on himself for support, he published in London ten years later, at the age of See also:thirty-six, the See also:volume of sketches which by its success committed: him to a literary career. In that work he found himself; sentiment and distinction of style characterized it, and these were his main traits. He remained abroad, always favoured in society and living in See also:diplomatic posts in See also:Spain and England, for seventeen years, and he later spent four years in Spain as minister. Spain gave him a larger opportunity than England for the cultivation of romantic sentiment, and he found there his best themes in Moorish See also:legend and history. On his return to America he added to his subjects the exploration of the west; and he wrote, besides, See also:biographies of See also:Goldsmith and Washington. He was, as it turned out, a voluminous writer; yet his books successively seem the See also:accident of his situation. The excellence of his work lies rather in the treatment than the substance; primarily, there is the pellucid style, which he See also:drew from his love of Goldsmith, and the charm of his personality shown in his romantic interest, his pathos and humour ever growing in delicacy, and his See also:familiar touch with humanity. He made his name American mainly by creating the legend of the Hudson, and he alone has linked his memory locally with his country so that it hangs over the landscape and blends with it for ever; he owned his nativity, too, by his pictures of the See also:prairie and the See also:fur-trade and by his life of Washington, who had laid his hand upon his See also:head; but he had spent half his life abroad, in the temperamental enjoyment of the romantic See also:suggestion of the old world, and by his writings he gave this expansion of sympathy and sentiment to his countrymen. If his temperament was native-born and his literary taste home-bred, and if his affections gave a legend to the countryside and his feelings See also:expanded with the view of prairie and wilderness, and if he sought to See also:honour with his See also:pen the historic associations and memory of the land which had honoured him, it was, nevertheless, the trans, See also:Atlantic touch that had loosed his genius and mainly fed it, andthis fact was prophetic of the immediate course of American literature and the most significant in his career. Cooper's See also:initiation into literature was similar to that of Irving. He had received, perhaps, something more of scanty formal education, since he attended Yale College for a See also:season, cooper. but he early took to the sea and was a See also:midshipman. He was thirty years old before he began to write, and it was almost an accident that after the failure of his first novel he finished The Spy, so deterring was the See also:prejudice that no American book cculd succeed. He was, however, a man of great See also:energy of life, great force of will; it was his nature to persist. The way once opened, he wrote voluminously and with great unevenness. His literary defects, both of See also:surface and construction, are patent. It was not by style nor by any detail of See also:plot or character that he excelled; but whatever imperfections there might be, his work was alive; it had See also:body, See also:motion, See also:fire. He See also:chose his subjects from aspects of life familiar to him in the See also:woods or on the sea or from patriotic memories near to him in the fields of the Revolution. He thus established a vital connexion with his own country, and in so far he is the most national by his themes of any of the American writers. What he gave was the See also:scene of the new world, both in the forest and by the fires of the Revolution and on the See also:swift and daring American See also:ships; but it was especially by his power to give the sense of the See also:primitive wilderness and the ocean See also:weather, and adventure there, that he won success. In France, where he was popular, this came as an See also:echo out of the real world of the west to the See also:dream of nature that had lately grown up in See also:French literature; and, besides, of all the springs of interest native to men in every land adventure in the See also:wild is, perhaps, the easiest to touch, the quickest and most inflaming to See also:respond. Cooper stood for a true element in American experience and conditions, for the See also:romance in the See also:mere presence of primeval things of nature newly found by man and opening to his coming; this was an imaginative moment, and Cooper seized it by his imagination. He especially did so in the See also:Indian elements of his See also:tale, and gave permanent ideality to the Indian type. The trait of loftiness which he thus incorporated belongs with the impression of the virgin forest and prairie, the breadth, the silence and the See also:music of universal nature. The distinction of his work is to open so great a scene worthily, to give it human dignity in rough and primitive characters seen in the simplicity of their being, and to fill it with peril, resourcefulness and hardihood. It is the only brave picture of life in the broad from an American pen. See also:Scott, in inventing the romantic treatment of history in fiction, was the See also:leader of the historical novel; but Cooper, except in so far as he employed the form, was not in a true sense an imitator of Scott; he did not create, nor think, nor feel, in Scott's way, and he came far See also:short of the deep human power of Scott's genius. He was not great in character; but he was great in adventure, manly spirit and the See also:atmosphere of the natural world, an Odysseyan writer, who caught the moment of the American planting in vivid and characteristic traits. This same spirit, but limited to nature in her most elemental forms and having the simplest generic relations to human life, characterizes Bryant. He, too, had slender See also:academic Bryant training, and came from the same social origins as
Irving and Cooper; but, owing to his extraordinary boyish precocity, the family influences upon him and the See also:kind of home he was bred in are more clearly seen. He framed his See also:art in his boyhood on the See also:model of 18th-century See also:verse, and though he felt the liberalizing influences of See also:Wordsworth later there always remained in his verse a sense of form that suggests a severer school than that of his English contemporaries. He lived the life of a journalist and public man in New York, but the poet in him was a man apart and he jealously guarded his talent in seclusion. Though he was at times abroad, he resembled Cooper in being unaffected by foreign See also:residence; he remained home-bred. He wrote a considerable quantity of verse; but it is by a quality in it rather than by its contents that his poetry is recalled, and this quality exists most highly in the few pieces that are well known. To no verse is the phrase "native See also:wood-notes wild " more properly applied. His poetry gives this deep impression of
privacy; high, clear, brief in See also:voice, and yet, as it were, as of something hidden in the See also:sky or See also: There was in it no profound passion nor See also:philosophy nor revolt; especially there was no morbidness. It was sprung from a new soil. The breath of the early American world was in Bryant's poetry; he had freed from the landscape a Druidical nature-See also:worship of singular purity, simple and See also:grand, unbound by any conventional formulas of thought or feeling but deeply spiritual. The new life of the land filled the scene of Cooper; prairie, forest and sea, Indians, backwoodsmen and sailors, the human struggle of all kinds, gave it diversity and detail; but its life was the American spirit, the epic See also:action of a people taking primitive See also:possession, battling with its various foes, making its world. Irving, more brooding and reminiscent, gave legend to the landscape, transformed rudeness with humour and brought elements of picturesqueness into play; and in him, in whom the new See also:race was more mature, was first shown that See also:nostalgia for the past, which is everywhere a romantic trait but was peculiarly strong under American conditions. He was consequently more free in imagination than the others, and first dealt with other than American subjects, emancipating literature from provinciality of theme, while the modes of his romantic treatment, the way he felt about his subjects, still owed much to his American birth. In all this literature by the three writers there was little complexity, and there was no strangeness in their personalities. Irving was more genially human, Cooper more vitally intense; Bryant was the more careful artist in the severe limits of his art, which was simple and plain. Simplicity and plainness characterize all three; they were, in truth, simple American gentlemen, of the breeding and tastes that a plain democracy produced as its best, who, giving themselves to literature for a, career, developed a native romanticism, which, however obvious and uncomplicated with philosophy, passion or moods, represented the first stage of American life with freshness of power, an element of ideal loftiness and much literary charm. Though Irving, Cooper and Bryant were associated with New York, there was something sporadic in their germination. They have no common source; they stood apart; and General their work neither overlapped nor blended, but progress. remained self-isolated. None of them can be said to have founded a school, but Irving See also:left a literary tradition and Cooper had followers in the See also: In poetry it was displayed on the most comprehensive scale in See also:Rufus See also:Wilmot See also:Griswold's (1815-1857) collections of American verse, made in the middle of the century. Mrs See also:Lydia See also:Sigourney (1791-1865), a prolific writer, and Mrs Maria Gowan See also:Brooks (1795-1845), known as See also:Southey's " Maria del Occidente," a more ambitious aspirant, the " See also:Davidson sisters (1808-1825 : 1823-1838), and Alice (1820-1871) and See also:Phoebe See also:Cary (1824-1871) illustrate the work of the women; and Richard Henry See also:Wilde (1789-1847), George See also:Pope See also:Morris (1802-1864), Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-1884) and See also:Willis Gaylord See also:Clark (1810-1841) may serve for that of men. In this verse, and in the abundant prose as well, the sentimentality of the period is strongly marked; it continued to the times of the Civil War. Two poets of a better type, Joseph Rodman See also:Drake (1795-1820), distinguished by delicacy of See also:fancy, and Fitz-See also:Greene See also:Halleck (1790-1867), who showed ardour and a real power of phrase, are remembered from an earlier time for their See also:brother-See also:hood in verse, but Drake died young and Halleck was soon sterilized, so that the talents of both proved abortive. The characteristic figure' that really exemplifies this secondary literature at its best is Nathaniel See also:Parker Willis (1806-1867) who, though born in See also:Portland, See also:Maine, was the chief litterateur of the Knickerbocker period. He wrote abundantly in both verse and prose, and was the first of the journalist type of authors, a social adventurer with facile powers of literary entertainment, a man of the town and immensely popular. He was the sentimentalist by profession, and his work, transitory as it proved, was typical of a large See also:share of the taste, talent and ambition of the contemporary See also:crowd of writers. Neighbouring him in time and place are the authors of various stripe, known as " the Literati," whom See also:Poe described in his See also:critical papers, which, in connexion with Griswold's collections mentioned above, are the See also:principal current source of See also:information concerning the bulk of American literature in that period. This world of the magazines, the Literati and sentimentalism, was the true milieu of See also:Edgar See also:Allan Poe (1809-1849). Born in Boston, his See also:mother a pleasing English actress and his Pay father a dissipated stage-struck youth of a See also:Baltimore family, left an See also:orphan in childhood, he was reared in the Virginian home of John Allan, a See also:merchant of Scottish extraction; he received there the stamp of southern character. He was all his life characteristically a southerner, with southern ideals of character and conduct, southern See also:manners towards both men and women and southern passions. He showed precocity in verse, but made his real debut in prose as editor of The Southern Literary Messenger at Richmond in 183,5. He was by his talents committed to a literary career, and being usually without definite means of support he followed the literary See also:market, first to Philadelphia and later to New York. He was continuously associated with magazines as editor, reviewer or contributor; they were his means of sustenance; and, whether as cause or effect, this mode of life See also:fell in with the nature of his mind, which was a contemporary mind. He was perhaps better acquainted with contemporary work in literature than any of his associates; he took his first cues from Disraeli and Bulwer and See also:Moore, and he was earliest to recognize See also:Tennyson and Mrs Browning; his principal reading was always in the magazines. He was, however, more than a man of literary temperament like Irving and Cooper; he was a See also:child of genius. As in their case, there was something sporadic in his appearance on the scene. He had no American origins, but only American conditions of life. In fact he bore little relation to his period, and so far as he was influenced, it was for the worse; he transcended the period, essentially, in all his creative work. He chose for a form of expression the sketch, tale or short atory, and he developed it in various ways. From the start there was a melodramatic element in him, itself a southern trait and developed by the literary See also:influence of Disraeli and Bulwer on his mind. He took the tale of mystery as his See also:special province; and receiving it as a mystery that was to be explained, after the See also:recent masters of it, he saw its fruitful lines of development in the fact that science had succeeded to superstition as the source of wonder, and also in the use of ratiocination as a mode of disentanglement in the detective See also:story. Brilliant as his success was in these lines, his great power lay in the tale of psychological states as a mode of impressing the mind with the thrill of terror, the See also:thrall of See also:fascination, the sense of mystery.- It is by his tales in these several sorts that he won, more slowly than Irving or Cooper and effectually only after his death, continental reputation; at See also:present no American author is so securely settled in the recognition of the world at large, and he owes this, similarly to Cooper, to the power of mystery over the human mind universally; that' is, he owes it to his- theme, seconded by a marvellous power to develop it by the methods of art. He thus added new traits to American romanticism, but as in the case of Irving's See also:Spanish studies there is no American element in the theme; he is detached from his local world, and works in the sphere of universal human nature, nor in his treatment is there any trace of his American birth. He is a world author more purely than any other American writer. Though it is on his tales that his continental reputation necessarily rests, his temperament is more subtly expressed in his verse, in which that fond of which his tales are the logical and intelligible growth gives out images and rhythms, the issue of morbid states, which affect the mind rather as a form of music than of thought. Emotion was, in art, his See also:constant aim, though it might be only so simple a thing as the emotion of See also:colour as in his landscape studies; and in his verse, by an unconscious integration and flow of elements within him it must be thought, he obtained emotional effects by images which have no intellectual value, and which See also:float in rhythms so as to act musically on the mind and arouse pure moods of feeling absolutely free of any other contents. Such poems must be an See also:enigma to most men, but others are accessible to them, and derive from them an original and unique See also:pleasure; they belong outside of the intellectual sphere. It is by virtue of this musical quality and immediacy that his poetry is characterized by genius; in proportion as it has meaning of an intelligible sort it begins to fade and See also:lower; so far as " Lenore " and " Annie " and " Annabel See also: In Virginia, Beverly See also:Tucker (1784-185.1) in The See also:Partisan Leader (1836), noticeable for its prophecy of See also:secession, and John Esten See also:Cooke (1830-1886) in The Virginia Comedians (1854), also won a passing reputation. The See also:champion in the south, however, was William See also:Gilmore See also:Simms (1806-1870), born in Charleston, a voluminous writer of both prose and verse, who undertook to depict, on the same scale as Cooper and in his manner, the settlement of the southern territory and its Indian and revolutionary history; but of his many novels, of which the characteristic examples are. The Yemassee (1835), The Partisan (1835) and Beauchampe (1842), none attained literary distinction. The sea-novel was developed by Herman See also:Melville (1819-1891) in Typee (1846) and its successors, but these tales, in spite of their being highly commended by lovers of adventure, have taken no more hold than the work of Simms. Single novels of wide popularity appeared from time to time, of which a typical instance was The Wide, Wide World (1850) by Susan See also:Warner (1819-1885). The grade of excellence was best illustrated, perhaps, for the best current fiction which was not to be incorporated in literature, by the novels of Catharine Maria See also:Sedgwick (1789-1867), of a western Massachusetts family, in See also:Hope See also:Leslie (1827) and its, successors. The distinct Knickerbocker See also:strain was best preserved by James See also:Kirke See also:Paulding (17.78-1860). among the See also:direct imitatorsof Irving; but the better part of the Irving tradition, its sentiment, social See also:grace and literary flavour, was not noticeable until it awoke in George William See also:Curtis (1824-1892), born a New Englander but, like Bryant, a journalist and public man of New York, whose novels, notes of travel and casual brief social essays brought that urbane style to an end, as in Donald See also: What most distinguished literature in New England from that to the west and south was its connexion with religion and scholarship, neither of which elements was strong in the literature that has been described. The neighbourhood of Harvard College to Boston was a powerful influence in the field of knowledge and critical culture. The most significant fact in respect to scholarship, however, was the residence abroad of George See also:Ticknor (1792-1871), author of The History of Spanish Literature (1849), of See also:Edward See also:Everett (1794-1865), the orator, and of George See also:Bancroft (1800-1891), author of the History of the United States (1834-1874), who as young men brought back new ideals of learning. The social connexion of Boston, not only with England but with the continent, was more constant, varied and intimate than fell to the See also:fortune of any other city, and owing ' to the serious temper of the community the intellectual commerce with the See also:outer world through books was more profound. Coleridge was early deeply influential on the thought of the cultivated class, and to him See also:Carlyle, who found his first sincere welcome and effectual power there, succeeded. The influence of both combined to introduce, and to secure attention for, See also:German writers. Translation, as time went on, followed, and German thought was also further sustained and advanced in the community by See also:Frederick Henry Hedge (18o5–1890), a philosophical theologian, who conducted a propaganda of German ideas. The activity of the group about him is significantly marked by the issue of the See also:series of Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature (1838), edited by George See also:Ripley (1802–1880), the critic, which was the first of its kind in America. French ideas, as time went on, were also current, and the field of See also:research extended to the Orient, the writings of which were brought forward especially in connexion with the Transcendental Movement to which all these foreign studies contributed. In New England, in other words, a close, serious and vital connexion was made, for the first time, with the philosophic thought of the world and with its tradition even in the remote past. See also:Unitarianism, which was the form in which the old Puritanism dissolved in the cultivated class, came in with the beginning of the century, and found its representative in the See also:gentle character, refined intelligence and liberal humanity of William See also:Ellery Charming (1780-1842), who has remained its chief apostle. It was the expression of a moral maturing and intellectual enlightenment that took place with as little disturbance as ever marked religious See also:evolution in any community. The people at large remained evangelical, but they also felt in a less degree the softening and liberalizing tendency; nevertheless it was mainly in the field of Unitarianism that literature flourished, as was natural, and See also:Transcendentalism was a phenomenon that grew out of Unitarianism, being indeed the excess of the movement of enlightenment and the extreme limit of intuitionalism, See also:individualism and private See also:judgment. These two factors, religion and scholarship, gave to New England literature its serious stamp and academic quality; but the preparatory stage being longer, it was slower to emerge than the literature of the See also:rest of the country. The first stirrings of romanticism in New England were felt, as in the country to the south, by men of Iiterary temperament in a sympathetic enjoyment and feeble See also:imitation of the contemporary English romantic school of fiction exemplified by Mrs See also:Radcliffe, See also:Lewis and Godwin. Washington See also:Allston (1779-1843), the painter, born in South Carolina but by education and See also:adoption a citizen of See also:Cambridge, showed the taste in Monaldi (1841), and Richard Henry See also:Dana (1787–1879) in See also:Paul See also:Felton (1833); in his poem of the same date, " The Buccaneer," the pseudo-Byronic element, which belongs to the conception of character and passion in this school of fiction, appears. These See also:elder writers illustrate rather the stage of imaginative culture at the period, and show by their other works also—Allston by his poems " The Sylphs of the Seasons" (1813), and Dana by his abortive periodical The Idle Man (1g2*) issued at New York—their essential sympathy with the literary conditions reigning before the time of Irving. They both were post-Revolutionary, and advanced American culture in other fields rather than imagination, Allston in art and Dana in See also:criticism, as editor of The North American See also:Review, which was founded in 1815, and was long the chief organ of serious thought and critical learning, influential in the dissemination of ideas and in the See also:maintenance of the intellectual life. The influence of their personality in the community, like that of See also:Channing, with whom they were closely connected, was of more importance than any of their works. The definite moment of the appearance of New England in literature in the true sense was marked by See also:Ralph See also:Waldo See also:Emerson's (18o3–r882) Nature (1836), Nafhaniel See also:Hawthorne's (1804–1864) Twice-Told Tales (1837) and Henry Wadsworth See also:Longfellow's (1807–1882) Voices of the See also:Night (1839). Of this group of men Longfellow is the most national figure, and fromthe point of view of literary history the most significant by virtue of what he contributed to American romanticism in the large. He felt the conscious See also:desire of the people for Emerson: an American literature, and he obeyed it in the choice flaw-of his subjects. He took national themes, and his work See also:thorn: is in this respect the counterpart in poetry to that of 1,fe/lawOIIY" Cooper in prose. In See also:Hiawatha (1855) he poetized the Indian life; and, though the scene and figures of the poem are no more localized than the happy See also:hunting-grounds, the ideal of the life of the See also:aborigines in the wilderness is given with freshness and primitive charm and with effect on the imagination. It is the See also:sole survivor of many poetic attempts to naturalize the Indian in literature, and will remain the classic Indian poem. In Evangeline (1847), The Courtship of See also:Miles See also:Standish (1858) and The New England Tragedies (1868), he depicted colonial life. As he thus em-bodied national tradition in one portion of his work, he rendered national character in another, and with more spontaneity, in those domestic poems of childhood and the affections, simple moods of the See also:heart in the common See also:lot, which most endeared him as the poet of the See also:household. These are American poems as truly as his historical verse, though they are also universal for the English race. In another large portion of his work he brought back from the romantic tradition of See also:Europe, after Irving's manner, motives which he treated for their pure poetic quality, detached from anything American, and he also translated much foreign verse from the north and the south of Europe, including See also:Dante's Divine Comedy (1867). He has, more than any other single writer, reunited America with the poetic past of Europe, particularly in its romance. The same serenity of disposition that marked Irving and Bryant characterized his life; and his art, more varied than Bryant's or Irving's, has the same refinement, being simple and so limpid as to deceive the reader into an oblivion of its quality and sometimes into an unwitting disparagement of what seems so plain and natural as to be commonplace. In Longfellow, as in Irving, one is struck by that quietude, which is so prevailing a characteristic of American literature, and which proceeds from its steady and even flow from See also:sources that never knew any disturbance or perturbation. The life, the art, the moods are all See also:calm; deep passion is absent. Hawthorne was endowed with a soul of more intense brooding, but he remained within the circle of this See also:peace. He developed it solitude exquisite grace of language, and in other respects was an artist, the See also:mate of Poe in the tale and exceeding Poe in significance since he used symbolism for effects of truth. He, like Longfellow, embodied the national tradition, in this case the Puritan past; but he seized the subject, not in its historical aspects and diversity of character and event, but psychologically in its moral passion in The See also:Scarlet See also:Letter (1850), and less abstractly, more picturesquely, more humanly, in its See also:blood tradition; in The See also:House of the Seven Gables. In his earlier work, as an artist, he shows the paucity of the materials in the environment, especially in his tales; but when his residence in See also:Italy and England gave into his hands larger opportunity, he did not succeed so well in See also:welding Italy with America in The See also:Marble Faun (1860), or England with America in his experimental attempts at the work which he left uncompleted, as he had done in the Puritan romances. He had, however, added a new domain to American romanticism; and, most of all these writers„ he blended moral truth with fiction; he, indeed, spiritualized romance, and with-out loss of human reality,—a rare thing inany literature. Both Longfellow and Hawthorne were happy in reconciling their art with their country: both, not less than Poe, were universal artists, but they incorporated the national past in their art and were thereby more profoundly American. Emerson, whose work lay in the religious sphere, not unlike Jonathan Edwards at an earlier time of See also:climax but in a different way, marked the issue of Puritanism in pure idealism, and was more contemporaneously associated with life in the times than were the purely imaginative writers. He was the central figure of Transcendentalism, and apart from his specific teachings stood for the American spirit, disengaged from authority, See also:independent, personal, responsible only to himself. He reached a revolutionary that were like See also:folklore in the memory of the settlement; See also:Holmes was a town wit and master of occasional verse, with notes here and there of a higher strain in single rare poems. The secondary literature that accompanied the work of these writers was abundant. .It was largely the product of Transcendentalism and much of it gathered about Emerson. In The See also:Dial (184o), the organ of Transcendentalism, he dall entaii smea-. introduced to the public his young friend, Henry See also:David See also:Thoreau (1817–1862), author of See also:Walden (1854) and the father of the nature-writers, who as a See also:hermit-type has had some European vogue and shows an increasing hold as an exception among men, but whose work has little literary distinction; and together with him, his See also:companion, William Ellery Channing (1818-1901), a poet who has significance only in the transcendentalist group. With them should be named Emerson's coeval, See also:Amos Bronson See also:Alcott (1799–1888), the See also:patriarch of the so-called See also:Concord philosophers, better esteemed for his powers of See also:monologue than as a writer in either prose or verse. Emerson's See also:associate-editor in The Dial was Sarah See also:Margaret See also:Fuller, afterwards Marchioness d'Ossoli (1810-185o), a woman of extraordinary qualities and much usefulness, who is best remembered by her Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1844), but contributed no permanent work to literature. She was a leading figure at Brook See also:Farm, the socialistic community founded by members of the group, and especially by Ripley, who like her afterwards emigrated to New York and together with her began a distinguished critical career in connexion with The New York See also:Tribune. Transcendentalism produced also its peculiar poet in See also: (1811–1896) See also:Uncle Tom's See also:Cabin (1852), which had a world-wide vogue; it is the chief contribution of the See also:anti-slavery movement to American literature and stands for See also:plantation life in the old south. Another See also:female writer, Mrs Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), remembered by her Philothea (1836), deserves mention in the line of notable American women who served their generation in literary ways and by devotion to public causes. Criticism was served escrllent y by See also:Edwin See also:Percy Whipple (1819- 838 extreme, but he had not arrived at it by revolutionary means; without See also:storm or stress, with characteristic peacefulness, he came to the great denials, and without much concerning himself with them turned to his own affirmations of spiritual reality, methods of life and personal results. Serenity was his peculiar trait; amid all the agitation about him he was entirely unmoved, lived calmly and wrote with placid power, concentrating into the slowlywrought sentences of his Essays (1841–1875) the spiritual essence and moral See also:metal of a life lived to See also:God, to himself and to his fellow-men. He, more than any other single writer, reunited American thought with the philosophy of the world; more than all others, he opened the ways of liberalism, wherever they may See also:lead. He was an emancipator of the mind. In his Poems (1847– 1867), though the abstract and the See also:concrete often find themselves awkward mates, his philosophic ideas are put forth under forms of imagination and his personal life is expressed with See also:nobility; his poetic originality, though so different in kind, is as unique as Poe's, and reaches a height of imaginative See also:faculty not elsewhere found in American verse. His poetry belongs more peculiarly to universal art, so pure in general is its philosophic content and so free from any temporal trait is the style; but it is as dis- tinguished for the laconic expression of American ideas, minted with one See also:blow, as his prose is for the constant'breathing of the American spirit. It is the less possible to define the American traits in Emerson, because they constituted the man. He was as purely an American type as See also:Lincoln. The See also:grain of the man is in his work also; and the best that his prose and verse contain is his personal force. In him alone is genius felt as power; in the others it impresses one primarily as culture, modes of artistic faculty, phases of temperament. In this, too, he brings to mind Jonathan Edwards, the other climax of the religious spirit in New England; in Edwards it was intellectual power, in Emerson it was moral power; in both it was indigenous, power springing from what was most profound in the historic life of the community. Three other names, John See also:Greenleaf See also:Whittier (1807–1892), See also:Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), James See also:Russell See also:Lowell (1819-1891), See also:complete the group of the greater writers whittler. of New England. Holmes was a more local figure, by Holmes: Lowell. his humour and wit and his mental acuteness a See also:Yankee and having the flavour of race, but neither in his verse nor his novels reaching a high degree of excellence and best known by The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), which is the Yankee prose classic. His contemporary reputation was largely social and owed much to the length of his life, but his actual hold on literature already seems slight and his work of little permanent value. Whittier stands somewhat apart as the poet of the soil and also because of his Quakerism; he was first eminent as the poet of the anti-slavery movement, to which he contributed much stirring verse, and later secured a broader fame by Snowbound (1866) and his religious poems of simple piety, welcome to every faith; he was also a balladist of local legends. In general he is the voice of the plain people without the See also:medium of academic culture, and his verse though of See also:low flight is near to their life and faith. Lowell first won distinction by The Biglow Papers (1848), which with the second series (1886) is the Yankee classic in verse, and is second only to his patriotic odes in maintaining his poetic reputation; his other verse, variously romantic in theme and feeling, and latterly. more kindred to English classic style, shows little originality and was never popularly received; it is rather the See also:fruit of great talent working in close literary sympathy with other poets whom from time to time he valued. His prose consists in the main of literary studies in criticism, a field in which he held the first See also:rank. Together with Holmes and Whittier he gives greater body, diversity and See also:illustration to the literature of New England; but in the work of none of these is there the initiative or the presence of single genius that characterize Emerson, Hawthorne and Longfellow. Lowell was a scholar with academic ties, a patriot above party, master of prose and verse highly developed and finished, and at times of a lofty strain owing to his moral See also:enthusiasm; Whittier was a Quaker See also:priest, vigorous in a great cause of humanity, with fluent power to See also:express in poetry the life of the farm, the roadside and the legends 1885), and less eminently by Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1813-1871), who emigrated to New York; but scholarship in general Scholar- flourished under the See also:protection of Harvard College, ship. where Ticknor, Longfellow and Lowell maintained a high ideal of literary knowledge and judgment in the See also:chair they successively filled, and were accompanied in English by Francis James Child (1825–1896), whose English and Scottish See also:Ballads, first issued in 1858, was brought to its final and monumental form in 1892. See also:Cornelius See also:Conway Felton (1807–1862), president of Harvard College, stood for See also:Greek culture) but the classical influence was little in See also:evidence. Elsewhere in New England George See also:Perkins See also:Marsh (1801–1882) of See also:Vermont, long minister to Italy, and William Dwight See also:Whitney (1827–1894) of Yale, were linguistic scholars of high distinction. The development of the colleges into See also:universities was already prophesied in the presence and work of these men. Outside of New England scholarship had been illustrated in New York by Charles See also:Anthon (1797–1867), the classical editor, by the Duyckincks, Evert See also:Augustus (1816–1878) and George Long (1823–1863), editors of the Cyclopaedia of American Literature (1855), and by Giulian Crommelin Verplanck (1786–1870), editor of Shakespeare (1846). New England thus, See also:standing somewhat apart, produced a characteristic literature, more deeply rooted in the community Character- than was the case elsewhere; and this literature, blend- istics See also:ing with what was produced to the south and west, of New became a predominant share of what has been nation-England ally accepted as standard American literature. It is literature. also the more profound and scholarly share; and if quantity as well as quality be counted, and, as is proper, Bryant be included as the product of Puritan culture, it is the more artistic share. American standard literature, so constituted, belongs to romanticism, and is a phase of the romanticism which was then the general See also:mood of literature; but it is a native product, with traits of its own and inward development from local conditions, not only apparent by its themes, but by its distinct evolution. Though it owed much to contact with Europe through its travelled scholars and its intellectual commerce by means of See also:translations and imported books, and often dealt with matter detached from America both in prose and poetry, it was essentially self-contained. It was, in a marked way, free from the passions whose source was the French Revolution and its after-throes from 1789 to 1848; it is by this fact that it differs most from European romanticism. Just as the Puritan See also:Rebellion in England left the colonies untouched to their own development, the political revolutions in Europe left the new nation unaffected to its normal evolution. There was never any revolution, in the French sense, in America, whether social, political, religious or literary; its great historical changes, such as the termination of English rule, the passing away of Puritan-ism, the abolition of slavery with the consequent destruction of the old South, were in a true sense conservative changes, normal phases of new life. In literature this state of things is reflected in the absence in it of any disturbance, its serenity of mood, its See also:air of quiet studies. It is shown especially in its lack of passion. The only ardours displayed by its writers are moral, patriotic or religious, and in none of them is there any sense of conflict. The life which they knew was wholesome, regular, still free from See also:urban corruption, the experience of a plain, prosperous and law-abiding people. None of these writers, though like Hawthorne they might See also:deal with sin or like Poe with horror and a See also:lover's despair at death, struck any tragic note. No tragedy was written, no love-poetry, no novel of passion. No literature is se See also:maiden-pure. It is by refinement rather than power that it is most distinguished, by taste and cultivation, by conscientiousness in art, in poetic and stylistic See also:craft; it is romance retrospectively seen in the national past, or conjured out of foreign lands by reminiscent imagination, or symbolically created out of fantasy; and this is supplemented by poetry of the domestic affections, the simple sorrows, all " that has been and may be again" in daily human lives, and by prose similarly related to a well-ordered life. If it is undistinguished by any work of supreme genius, it reflects broadly and happily and in enduring formsthe national tradition and character of the land in its dawning century. The original impulse of this literature had spent its force by 1861—that is, before the Civil War. The greater writers had, in general, already done their characteristic work, and though the survivors continued to produce till toward the close of the century, their works contained no new element and were at most mellow fruits of age. The war itself, like the Revolution, left little trace in literature beyond a few popular songs and those occasional poems which the older poets wrote in the course of the conflict. Their attitude toward it and (with the exception of Whittier and Lowell) toward the anti-slavery movement which led up to it was rather that of citizens than of poets, though in the verse of Longfellow and Emerson there is the See also:noble stamp of the See also:hour, the impress of liberty, bravery and sorrow. Lowell is the exception; he found in the See also:Commemoration See also:Ode (1865) his loftiest subject and most enduring fame. The work began to fall into new hands, and a literature since the war grew up, which was, however, especially in poetry, a continuation of romanticism and contained its declining force. It was contributed to from all parts of the older country, and also from the west, and a generation has now added its completed work to the sum. No author, in this See also:late period, has received the national welcome to the same degree as the men of the elder time; none has had such personal distinction, See also:eminence or public See also:affection; and none has found such. See also:honourable favour abroad, either in England or on the continent. Poetry has felt the presence of the art of Tennyson, which has maintained an extreme sensitiveness among the poets to artistic requirements of both material and technique; and it also has taken colour from the later English See also:schools. It has, however, yielded its pre-eminent position to prose. The novel has displaced romance as the highest form of fiction, and the See also:essay has succeeded the review as the form of criticism. The older colleges have grown into universities, and public libraries have multiplied throughout the north and west. The literature of information, meant for the popularization of knowledge of all kinds, has been put forth in great quantity, and the See also:annual increase in the See also:production of books keeps See also:pace with the general growth of the country. Literature of distinction, however, makes but a small part of this large mass. In poetry the literary tradition was continued in Boston by Thomas See also:Bailey See also:Aldrich (1836–1907), essentially a stylist in verse, brief, definite, delicate, who carried the lighter See also:graces of Later the art, refinement, wit, See also:polish, to a high point of excel- writers. lence. His artistic See also:consanguinity is with See also:Herrick and See also:Landor, and he takes motive and colour for his verse from every land, as his predecessors had done, but with effects less See also:rich. He divided attention between drama and lyric, but as his dramas look strictly to the stage, it is on the lyrics that his reputation rests. He was master also of an excellent prose and wrote novels, sketches of travel, and especially stories, strongly marked by humour, surprise and literary distinction. In New York, See also:Edmund See also:Clarence See also:Stedman (1833–1908) became the chief representative of the literary profession. He was both poet and critic, and won reputation in the former and the first rank in the latter field. His Victorian Poets (1875) and Poets of America (1885), followed by comprehensive anthologies (1894–1900), together with The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892), are the principal critical work of his generation, and indeed the sole work that is eminent. His verse, less practised as time went on, was well wrought and often distinguished by flashes of spirited song and balladry. With him is associated his elder friend, Richard Henry See also:Stoddard (1825–1903), who made his appearance before the Civil War, and whose verse belongs in general character to the style of that earlier period and is as rapidly forgotten. Both Stedman and Stoddard were of New England birth, as was also the third to be mentioned, William See also:Winter (born 1836), better known as the lifelong dramatic critic of the See also:metropolis. The last of the New York poets of established reputation, Richard See also:Watson See also:Gilder (b. 1844 in New See also:Jersey ; d. 1909) , was at first affiliated with the school of See also:Rossetti, and his work in general, Five Books of Song (1894), strongly marked by artistic susceptibility, is in a high degree refined and delicate. In the country at large popular success, in England as well as in America, was won by Charles Godfrey See also:Leland (1824–1903), in Hans Breitmann's Ballads (1871), humorous poems in the See also:Pennsylvania Dutch See also:dialect. Born in Philadelphia, he spent the greater part of his mature life abroad and wrote numerous works on diverse topics, but his reputation is chiefly connected with his books on gypsy life and lore. Another foreign resident who deserves mention was William Wetmore Story (1819–1895), the sculptor, of Massachusetts, connected with the Boston group, whose verse and prose gave him the rank of a litterateur. The South again entered into literature with the work of See also:Sidney See also:Lanier (1842–1881), in succession to Henry Timrod (1829–1867) and Paul Hamilton See also:Hayne (1830-1886), who find a place rather by the affection in which they are held at the South than by See also:positive merit. Lanier showed originality and a true poetic See also:gift, but his talents were little effectual. From the West humorous poetry was produced by Francis Bret See also:Harte (1839–1902), born in See also:Albany, in The See also:Heathen Chinee (1870) and similar verse, but he is better remembered as the artistic narrator of western See also:mining life in his numerous stories and novels. Verse of a similar kind also first brought into literary See also:notice John See also:Hay (1838–1905), in See also:Pike See also:County Ballads (1871), who also wrote in prose; but his reputation was rather won as a statesman in the closing years of his life. Minor poets of less distinction but with a vein See also:superior to that of the earlier period, more excellent in workmanship and more coloured with imagination and mood, arose in all parts, of whom the most notable are Julia Ward See also:Howe (born 1819), in Boston, the See also:venerable friend of many good causes, Henry Howard Brownell (18zo–1872) of Rhode See also:Island, author of the most vigorous and realistic poetry of the Civil War, War Lyrics (1866), Edward See also:Rowland See also:Sill (1841–1887), born in See also:Connecticut but associated with See also:California, Henry See also:Van Dyke (born 1852), in New York, better known by his prose in tale and essay, See also:Silas See also:Weir Mitchell (born 1830), in Philadelphia, whose repute as a novelist has overshadowed his admirable verse, See also:Eugene Field (1850–1895) of See also:Chicago, James Whitcomb See also:Riley (born 1853) of See also:Indiana, both distinguished for their humorous and childhood verse, and Joaquin See also:Miller (born 1841) of See also:Oregon, whose first work, Songs of the Sierras (1871), had in it much of the spirit of the wild land, the colour of the See also:desert, the free, adventurous character of the See also:filibuster, all strangely mixed with pseudo-Byronic passions. Apart from all these, whether minor or See also:major poets, stands Walt See also:Whitman (1819-1892), whose Leaves of Grass (1855) first appeared whttman. before the war, but whose fame is associated rather with its successive See also:editions and its companion volumes, and definitely dated, perhaps, from 1867. He received attention in England, as did Miller, on an See also:assumption that his works expressed the new and original America, the unknown democracy, and he has had some vogue in See also:Germany plainly owing to his See also:naturalism. His own countrymen, however, steadily refuse to accept him as representative of themselves, and his naturalism is uninteresting to them, while on the other hand a group apparently increasing in critical authority treat his work as significant. It is, in general, only by those few fine lyrics which have found a place in all anthologies of American verse that he is well known and highly valued in his own land. The chief field of literary activity has been found in the novel, and nowhere has the change been so marked as here. The romantictreatmentof the novel practically disappeared, The later and in its place came the realistic or See also:analytic treatment, novel. rendering manners by See also:minute strokes of observation or dissecting motives psychologically. This amounted to a substitution of the French art of fiction, in some of its forms, for the English tradition of broad ideality and historical picturesqueness. The protagonist of the reform was William See also:Dean See also:Howells (born 1837), a cultivated literary scholar, and a various writer of essays, travel sketches, poetry and plays, editor of many magazines and books, whose career in letters has been more laborious and mis= cellaneous than any other contemporary, but whose main work has been the long series of novels that he has put forth almost annually throughout the period. He not only wrote fiction, buthe endeavoured to make known to Americans fiction as it was practised in other lands, See also:Russia, Italy, Spain, and to bring the art that was dearest to him into line with the standard of the European world. He was an apostle of the realistic school, and directed his teaching to the advocacy of the novel of observation, which records life in its conditions and attempts to realize what is in the daily lives and experience of man rather than what belongs to adventure, imagination or the dreaming part of life. Of his works, The See also:Lady of the Aroostook (1879), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), A See also:Hazard of New Fortunes (1889), are characteristic examples. He won a popular vogue, and if it is now less than it was, it is because after a score of years tastes and fashions change. The conscientiousness of his art continues the tradition of American writers in that respect, and he is master of an affable style. His work, including all its phases, is the most important body of work done in his generation. Henry James (born 1843), who mainly resided abroad, is his compeer, and in a similar way has followed French initiative. He also has been a various writer of criticism and travel and the occasional essay; but his equally long series of novels sustains his reputation. He has developed the psychological treatment of fiction, and of his work The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Princess Casamassima (1886) and The Tragic Muse (1890) are characteristic. He has had less vogue owing to both matter and style, but in certain respects his power, more intellectual than that of Howells, has greater artistic elements, while the society with which he deals is more complex. He is really a See also:cosmopolitan writer and has no other connexion with America than the accident of birth. A third novelist, also a foreign resident, Francis See also:Marion See also:Crawford (1854–1909), falls into the same See also:category. A prolific novelist, in the beaten track of story-telling, he has always a story to tell and excellent narrative power. The work regarded as most important from his hand is Saracinesca (1887) and its sequels; but his subjects are cosmopolitan, his talent is personal, and he has no effectual connexion with his own country. The romantic tradition of the older time was continued by Lew See also:Wallace (1827–1905) of Indiana, a distinguished general and diplomat, in his Mexican tale, The See also:Fair God (1873), and his oriental romances, See also:Ben Hur (1880), one of the most widely circulated of American books, and The Prince of See also:India (1893). A mode of the novel which was wholly unique was practised by Francis Richard See also:Stockton (1834–1902) in his droll tales, of which See also:Rudder See also:Grange (1879) is the best known. The principal minor product of the novel lay in the provincial tale. The new methods easily See also:lent themselves to the See also:portraiture of local conditions, types and colour. Every part of the country had its writers who recorded its traits in this way. For New England Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe described the older life in Old Town Folks (1869);. and was succeeded by Sarah See also:Orne See also:Jewett (1849–1909) and See also:Mary Eleanor See also:Wilkins (born 1862). The West was notably treated by Edward See also:Eggleston (1837–1902) 111 The Hoosier School Master (1871), Mary Hallock See also:Foote (born 1847) in Led-See also:Horse Claim (1883) and See also:Hamlin See also:Garland (born 1860) in Main Travelled Roads (1891). The South was represented by Mary See also:Noailles Murfree [" Charles Egbert See also:Craddock "] (born 1850) in In the See also:Tennessee Mountains (1884) and its successors, by Thomas See also:Nelson See also:Page (born 1853) in Marse Chan (1887) and other tales of the reconstruction in Virginia, and with most literary grace by George Washington See also:Cable (born 1844), whose novels of See also:Louisiana are remarkable for their poetic charm. The See also:list is sufficiently illustrative of the general movement, which made what was called the dialect novel supreme for the season. This was succeeded by a revival of the historical novel in local fields, of which Winston See also:Churchill (born 1871) in Richard Carvel (1899) is the leading exponent, and together with it the See also:sword and See also:dagger tale of the See also:Dumas type, the special contemporary plot invented by See also:Anthony Hope, and romance in its utmost forms of adventure and extravagance, came in like a See also:flood at the close of the Spanish War. There were during the period from 1870 to 1900 many other writers of fiction, who often proceeded in conventional and time-honoured ways to tell their tale, but none of them is especially significant for the general view or as showing any tendencies of an original sort. The pietistic novel, for
LITERATURE
example, was. produced with immense popularity by Edward See also:Payson See also:Roe (1838—1888), who shared the same vogue as See also:Josiah See also: 1837) of .New York carried on in essay form the nature tradition of Thoreau, touched with Emersonianism in the thought, and after his example books of mingled observation, sentiment and literary quality, with an out-of-See also:door atmosphere, have multiplied.
American humour often cultivates a form akin to the essay,
but it also falls into the See also:mould of the tale or scene from life. In
rumour. the period before the Civil War, to sum up the whole
subject in this place, it had the traits which it has
since maintained, as its local tang, of See also:burlesque, extravaganza,
violence, but it recorded better an actual state of manners and
scene of life in raw aspects. Its noteworthy writers were Seba
Smith (1792—1868) of Maine, author of the Letters of Major See also:Jack
See also:Downing, which began to appear in the press in 1830; Augustus
See also:Baldwin See also:Longstreet of See also:Georgia in Georgia Scenes (1835); William
Tappan See also:Thompson (1812—1882), born in See also:Ohio but associated with
the South by descent and residence, in Major Jones' Courtship
(1840), a Georgian publication; Joseph G. Baldwin (1815—1864)
in Flush Times in See also:Alabama and See also:Mississippi (1853); and
Benjamin See also:Penhallow Shillaber (1814—1890) in Life and Sayings of
Mrs Partington (1854). A fresh form, attended by whimsicality,
appears in George Horatio See also:Derby's (1823—1861) Phoenixiana
(1855). In the war-times Robert Henry Newell (1836—1901) and
David See also:Ross See also:Locke (1833—1888), respectively known as " See also:Orpheus
C. Kerr " and " See also:Petroleum V. Nasby " cultivated grotesque
See also:orthography in a characteristic vein of wit; and with more
quaintness and drollery Henry See also:Wheeler See also:Shaw (1818—1885) and
Charles See also:Farrar See also: The heir to this tradition of See also:farce, drollery and joke
was Samuel See also:Langhorne Clemens (1835--1910); known as "See also:Mark
See also:Twain," born in See also:Missouri, who raised it. to an extraordinary
height of success and won world-wide reputation as a great and
original humorist. His works, however, include a broader
See also:compass of fiction, greater humanity and reality, and ally him to
the masters of humorous creation. Joel See also:Chandler See also:Harris (1848 1908) of Georgia introduced a new variety in Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), which is literary negro folklore, and Finley See also:Peter See also:Dunne (born .1857) of Chicago, the creator of " Mr Dooley," continues the older American style in its original traits.
History was represented in this period with a distinction not inferior to that of the elder group by Francis See also:Parkman (1823—1893) of Boston, who, however, really belongs with Nlstoiv. the. preceding age by his affiliations; his series of
histories fell after the Civil War by their See also:dates of publication, but they began with History of the See also:Conspiracy of See also:Pontiac ,(1851); he was the contemporary of Lowell and differed from the other members of the elder group, who survived, only by the fact of the later maturing of his work. He was not less eminent than Motley and Prescott and his history is of a more modern type. In the next generation the field of American history was cultivated iy many scholars, and a large part of local history and of national biography was for the first time recorded. James See also:Ford Rli See also:des'9 (1848) History of the United States (1892) holds standard rank; the. various writings of John See also:Fiske (1842—1901),. distinguished also as a philosophical writer, iu the colonial and revolutionary periods are valued both for scholarship and for excellent literary style; and Theodore See also:Roosevelt's (born 1858) The Winning of the West (18$9) and his several See also:biographical studies deserve mention by their merit as well as for his eminent position. The historians, how-ever, have seldom sought literary excellence, and their works belong rather to learning than to literature. The same statement is true of the scholarship of the universities in general, where the spirit of literary study has changed. In the See also:department of scholarship little requires mention ' beyond See also:Horace Howard See also:Furness's (born 1833) lifelong work on his Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, the Shakespearian labours of Henry See also:Norman Hudson (1814—1886) and Richard Grant See also: The national tradition has been absorbed and incorporated, so far as literature was able to accomplish this. The national character on the other hand has been expressed rather in local types, the colour of isolated communities and provincial conditions for their picturesque value and human truth, and in commonplace characters of See also:average life; but no broadly ideal types of the old English tradition have been created, and the great scene of life has not been staged after the manner of the imaginative masters of the past. There has been no product of ideas since Emerson; he was, indeed, the sole author who received and fertilized ideas as such, and he has had no successor. America is, in truth, perhaps intellectually more remote from Europe than in its earlier days. The contact of its romanticism with that of Europe was, as has been seen, imperfect, but its touch with the later developments and reactions of the movement in Europe is far more imperfect. With See also:Tolstoy, See also:Ibsen, d'See also:Annunzio, See also:Zola, See also:Nietzsche, See also:Maeterlinck, See also:Sudermann, the American people can have no effectual touch; their social tradition and culture make them impenetrable to the present ideas of Europe as they are current in literary forms. Nor has anything been developed from within that is fertile in literature. The political unity of the nation is achieved, but it is not See also:ari integral people in other respects. It has not the unity of England or France or even of the general European mind; it rather contains such disparate elements as characterize the See also:Roman or the See also:Turkish See also:empire. It is cleft by political tradition and in social moral conviction, north and south, and by intellectual strata of culture See also:east and west; it is still a people in the making. Its literature has been regional, as was said, centred in New England, New York, Philadelphia, contributed to sporadically from the South, growing up in Western districts like Indiana or germinating in See also:Louisville in See also:Kentucky, abundant in California, but always much dependent on the culture of its localities; it blends to some extent in the mind of the national reading public, but not very perfectly. The universities have not, on the whole, been its sources or fosterers, and they are now filled with research, useful for learning but impotent for literature. The intellectual life is now rather to be found in social, political and natural science than elsewhere; the imaginative life is feeble, and when felt is crude; the poetic See also:pulse is imperceptible. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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