American Literature

AMERICAN LITERATURE LIST
American Literature, the Colonial Period, 1620s–1776.

Start here.

1791, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin.

1812, 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.

1820, The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving.

1826, The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757, James Fenimore Cooper.
1836, In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) started a movement known as Transcendentalism. Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) wrote Walden, which urges resistance to the dictates of organized society. The political conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired the writings of William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe in her world-famous Uncle Tom’s Cabin. These efforts were supported by the continuation of the slave narrative autobiography, of which the best known example from this period was Frederick Douglass‘s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

1845, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, Frederick Douglas.
1850, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
1851, Moby Dick, Herman Melville.
1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
1855, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman.
1855, My Bondage and My Freedom, Frederick Douglas.

1855, The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

1860, Paul Revere’s Ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

1865, Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, Mary Mapes Dodge.
1881, The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James.
1884, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain.

1888, The Young Acrobat, Horatio Alger, Jr.
1893, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane.
1895, The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane.
1898, The Turn of the Screw, Henry James.
1900, Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser.
1902, The Wings of the Dove, Henry James.
1903, The Ambassadors, Henry James.
1903, The People of the Abyss, Jack London.
1903, Call of the Wild, Jack London.
1904, The Golden Bowl, Henry James.
1905, The House of Mirth, Edith Warton.
1906, White Fang, Jack London.
1908, “To Build a Fire,” Jack London.
1908, The Iron Heel, Jack London.
1909, Three Lives, Gertrude Stein.
1911, Ethan Frome, Edith Warton.
1913, O Pioneers!, Willa Cather.
1918,  My Antonia, Willa Cather.
1920, This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
1920, The Age of Innocence, Edith Warton.
1922, The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
1924, Billy Budd, Herman Melville, published postumously in 1924.
1924, The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein.
1925, An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser.
1925, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
1927, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder.
1929, A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway.

1931, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.
1933,  Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder.
1934, Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
1935, Lucy Gayheart, Willa Cather.
1944, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams.
1947, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams.

1948, “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson.

1948, The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer.
1949, Shane, Jack Schaefer.
1949, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller.
1951, The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger.
1952, The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway.
1953, The Crucible, Arthur Miller.

1953, The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow. [He was Canadian]

1953, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury.

1957, On the Road, Jack Kerouac.
1960, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee.

1962, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey.

1964, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Hannah Green.

1964, Herzog, Saul Bellow.

1965, An American Dream, Norman Mailer.

1979, The Executioner’s Song, Norman Mailer.

1991, Harlot’s Ghost, Norman Mailer.

1996, The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks.

2002, The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold.

2005, No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy.

The 1918 novel by Willa Cather, My Antonia, will always endear me to the plains.  And when I see photos like this of the pioneers building and living in sod houses, I am inspired.  The caption reads, “A sod blacksmith shop in Sod Town, Nebraska, 1886.”

Caption for the pic below reads, “The Sommers Family in Front of their House in Custer County, Nebraska, 1888.”

Caption for the pic below reads, “The Moses Speese family sits for a portrait outside their sod house on the prairie, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888.”  Note the windmill.  They were important tools for living on the plains.  Know what they’re used for and how they work.  National Park Services provides a good description of their importance,

Self-governing water pump windmills soon became a staple on the plains. Homesteaders, farmers, and ranchers were no longer dependent on natural water as they could drill wells and pump water. Windmills were often among a homesteader’s most prized possessions. The water pumped by windmills was used to cook, bathe, drink, water crops and animals, wash clothes, and more. These mills were simple, well-constructed, and dependable.

Did all families on the plains have windmills?

Caption for the pic below, “A pioneer family posing with their farm equipment in front of their sod farmhouse, Nebraska, 1880s.”

Caption for the pic below reads, “Sod house with settlers, Nebraska, 1880.”

Caption to the photo below is “A family poses in front of sod house, south of West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887.”

Caption for the photo below reads, “The Old lady and her Pets”, 1886.

Caption for the pic below reads, “Sod house in the Nebraska plains, 1887.”

Caption for the photo below reads, “Nperry Brothers In Front Of Their Sod House Near Merna Custer County, Nebraska, 1886.”

Caption for the pic below reads “Arriving in Nebraska from Belgium in the spring of 1883, Isadore Haumont poses with his family for Butcher in front of their two-story sod house on French Table, north of Broken Bow, in 1886.”

Imagine Jimmy Burden, the narrator of My Antonia, riding out on a train like this from the east.  Caption reads “Train Travel in the 1890s.”

Though this family is from Kansas, it does capture what life was like for the Shimerdas of My Antonia, 1918.  Caption reads “Pioneer Family in Front of Sod House, Kansas, 1880.”

DUGOUTS

So the above houses are sod houses, here is a dugout, homes built halfway into the ground.  And these were often for pioneers who didn’t have much.  The caption to the below pic reads, “Cowboy getting a haircut, 1909.”

“Ambrose Bierce’s Pro-Freedom Cynicism,” James Bovard, FFF, August 16, 2021.

Posted on Saturday, February 4, 2023

A family in front of their sod house in Custer County, Nebraska, 1887.