Important Authors and
Literature in United States History
AP Students: Major authors and writings often appear on
the AP Exam. Here is a catalog of major
authors and works throughout U.S. History.
Any works that had a major political, social and/or economic influence
on history have an asterisk (*) and are highlighted in yellow (REVIEW THESE FOR THE AP EXAM)
|
Date |
Author / Work(s) |
Significance to U.S. History |
|
1630 |
*John Winthrop, A Modell of
Christian Charity |
Famous “City upon a
Hill” sermon; describes the religious mission of Puritans migrating to
Massachusetts |
|
1732 (ed. 1750s) |
Benjamin Franklin, Poor
Richard’s Almanack
|
Various thoughts, quips
and advice (widely read) |
|
1741 |
Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God (sermon)
|
Sermon typical of the
First Great Awakening; “fire and brimstone” |
|
1776 |
*Thomas Paine, Common Sense
|
Arguments for
independence; widely read and distributed and helped push the colonies
towards independence |
|
1776 |
*Thomas Paine, The Crisis
|
Arguments for committing
to the Revolution; keeping the cause |
|
1782 |
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, Letters from an American Farmer
|
French settler to the
American colonies who wrote a vivid description of life in America; first
explored the “American dream” concept |
|
1788 |
*Alexander Hamilton, James
Madison, John Jay, The Federalist Papers
|
Serious of essays to
argue for ratification of the Constitution; used today to assist in
interpreting the Constitution |
|
1789 |
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano
|
Vivid descriptions of
the Middle Passage |
|
1836 |
The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk
|
Fictional story
published by nativists to encourage
anti-Catholicism |
|
1830s |
McGuffey’s Readers
|
Grade-school books
which instilled lessons of nationalism and moral behavior (typical of
antebellum period) |
|
MAJOR AUTHORS OF THE ANTEBELLUM PERIOD: the
first uniquely American literature that embraced the nationalism of the
post-War of 1812 era |
||
|
Washington Irving (1783-1859) – Knickerbocker’s
History of New York (1809), Sketch
Book (1819-1820) including “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow” James Fenimore Cooper
(1789-1851) – First American novelist;
The Last of the Mohicans (1829) William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) – Poet and editor of the New York Evening Post |
||
|
TRANSCENDENTALISTS (1830s-1840s) |
||
|
*Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882) –
Philosopher, author, poet and abolitionist: ·
The American Scholar (1837 speech) ·
Essays (1841), included “Self-Reliance” *Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862) ·
Walden: Or Life in the Woods (1854) ·
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849) Walt Whitman (1819-1892) – poet, nicknamed the “Poet Laureate
of Democracy” ·
Leaves of Grass (1855) ·
O Captain! My Captain! (1865) |
||
|
OTHER ANTEBELLUM AUTHORS |
||
|
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) – Little Women (1868) Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) – Poet – “The Raven” (1845) Nathanial Hawthorne (1804-1864) – The Scarlett
Letter (1850) Herman Melville (1819-1891) – Moby Dick (1851) |
||
|
1834-1876 |
George Bancroft, History of the
United States from the discovery of the American continent (9 volumes)
|
First major account of
U.S. History; credited as the “father of American History”; also founder of
the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and Secretary of the Navy during the
Mexican-American War |
|
|
|
|
|
*ABOLITIONISTS |
||
|
1829 |
David Walker, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World; black abolitionist who
advocated a violent end to slavery |
|
|
1831 |
William Lloyd
Garrison, The Liberator (white abolitionist; argued
for immediate emancipation) |
|
|
1845-49 |
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and The North Star (publishing began
1849); escaped slave who became leader of the abolitionist movement; argued
for a legal end to slavery |
|
|
1852 |
**Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
|
Widely read and
distributed fictional story about slavery; helped to convince more northern
about the evils of slavery |
|
1854 1857 |
George Fitzhugh, Sociology of
the South
|
Pro-South defense of
slavery and attacks against northern society |
|
1879 |
Henry George, Progress and
Poverty
|
Exposed problems of
poverty and growing gap between rich and poor in the Gilded Age |
|
1881 |
*Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor
|
Cataloged the history
of US-Indian relations and led to a political effort by humanitarians seeking
more just policies towards Indian tribes |
|
1885 |
Ulysses S. Grant, The Personal Memoirs
of U.S. Grant
|
First-hand account of
the life of U.S. Grant and the Civil War; published at his death; one of the
most famous and respected Americans at the time (and mourned in both north
and south in 1885) |
|
1895 |
Booker T. Washington, The
Atlanta Exposition (speech)
|
Speech in which
Washington urged African Americans to seek a vocational education and not
directly challenge segregation (theory challenged by W.E.B. DuBois) |
|
1890s-1900s |
William James (Pragmatism Movement): ·
Principles of Psychology (1890) ·
Pragmatism
(1907) See
special insert in Kennedy, 580-581: “Pioneering Pragmatists” |
First truly American
school of philosophy (“truth an idea to be tested” – Kennedy, 578) |
|
Mid-1800s |
WRITINGS OF MARK
TWAIN ·
Stories of
adventure, some critiques of society/life (i.e. Gilded Age, 1873) ·
Classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1884) |
|
|
1890 |
*Captain Alfred
Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783
|
Argued that naval power
was key to world dominance; led to build-up of naval power |
|
1890 |
*Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
|
Exposé of the terrible
conditions in the cities and slums; helped encourage urban reform (common
theme in the Progressive Age of the 1900s) |
|
1893 |
*Frederick Jackson
Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (lecture)
|
Major historical theory
of the 1890s that Americans have been defined by a movement to a frontier
(written at a time when the US Census Bureau declared in 1890 that the
frontier was “closed”) |
|
1893 |
Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl
of the Streets
|
Exposed prostitution
and difficult life in Gilded Age cities |
|
1894 |
Henry Demarest Lloyd, Wealth Against Commonwealth
|
Criticism of the
Standard Oil Company |
|
1895 |
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
|
Epic of the Civil War
era (secondary source as Crane was born in 1871!) |
|
TURN OF THE CENTURY AUTHORS (1880s-1910s) |
||
|
·
Henry Adams, The Education of
Henry Adams (1907) and other works ·
Henry James (“Trans-Atlantic Author), Daisy Miller (1879), The
Bostonians (1886) ·
Others noted in Kennedy, 584-585 |
||
|
THE PROGRESSIVE AGE |
||
|
1900 |
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
|
Story of poor girl
working in the cities (beginning of the Progressive movement) |
|
1902 |
*Lincoln Steffens, “The Shame of the Cities” (article in McClure’s Magazine)
|
“Muckraker” who exposed
urban problems (similar to Jacob Riis and others) |
|
1903 |
*Jack London, The Call of the Wild
|
Helped promote a
growing conservation (or environmental) movement later championed by Teddy
Roosevelt |
|
1906 |
*Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
|
Exposed poor sanitation
in the meatpacking industry and led directly to food and drug regulation by
the federal government (T. Roosevelt) |
Other “Muckrakers”:
·
Ida M. Tarbell (exposé
of Standard Oil Company)
·
David G. Phillips (corruption
in the Senate)
·
Others that addressed
child labor, segregation, alcoholism and general urban corruption
|
These “muckrakers”
exposed critical social and economic problems that led to direct government
intervention and thus, the “Progressive Movement.” This new type of
journalism was made possible by the increasing amount of magazines and
newspapers that resulted from technological enhances to the printing press (“yellow
journalism”) |
|
|
1920s |
*Langston Hughes
|
Famous writer of the “Harlem
Renaissance”: a literary and cultural movement that promoted African American
pride, especially in urban dwellings |
|
1920s |
H.L. Mencken (editor of The
Mercury)
|
Critical essays and
jabs on marriage, patriotism, etc. (see Kennedy 742) |
|
*1920s LITERATURE |
||
|
·
F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of
Paradise (1920) and The Great
Gatsby (1925) ·
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also
Rises (1926) and Farewell to Arms
(1929) ·
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922) ·
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
(1930) ·
“Trans-Atlantic” Poets: Ezra Pound & T.S. Eliot |
Early 1920s literature
often represented disillusionment with society as a result of the
psychological shock of World War I.
Some simply assessed the changing social values of the 1920s through
fictional stories. |
|
|
1939 |
*John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
|
Novel about the Dust
Bowl of the 1930s |
|
1944 |
*Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy
|
Challenged the hypocracy of the United States waging a war against
racism abroad while racial discrimination and segregation existed in the
United States. |
|
1945 |
Dr. Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense
Book of Baby and Child Care
|
An instruction manual
for parents; shaped many of the child-rearing beliefs of the 1950s |
|
1949 |
George Orwell, 1984
|
Though an English
author, his book portrayed a “big brother” government-run society in the year
1984 |
|
1949 |
Arthur Miller, Death of a
Salesman (play)
|
Tragedy about a man
pursuing the American dream in the 1940s |
|
1951 |
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
|
Portrayed themes of
adolescence, sexuality and conflicts with the predominant *theme of conformity in the 1950s (other examples seen in the “beatnik”
movement of the 1950s, including the 1955 Film, Rebel
without a Cause) |
|
1953 |
Arthur Miller, The Crucible
(play)
|
Play about the Salem
Witchcraft Trials, often considered to be written as an attack on the
McCarthy era |
|
1956 |
*William H. Whythe, Jr., The Organization Man
|
Very influential book
about the workplace, suburbs and the relationship to people’s lives (still in
print today!) |
|
1962 |
*Michael Harrington,
The Other America
|
Exposed poverty in
America; helped gain momentum for the war on poverty recommended by Kennedy
and launched in Johnson’s “Great Society” |
|
1962 |
*Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
|
Exposed problems of
water quality and contamination by pesticides – led directly to the
environmental movement of the 1960s-1970s and federal government regulation
and regulatory agencies (i.e. EPA) |
|
1963 |
*Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
|
Led directly to the modern
feminist movement of the 1960s-1970s |
|
1969 |
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Slaughterhouse
Five
|
Anti-war science
fiction novel |