The period of the American Revolution was dominated by political writers, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. Influential writers of the early 19th century included Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe and American literature came to its full maturity in the works of the New England writers Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Herman Melville, the poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and the humorist Mark Twain.

The influence of English literature on the early development of American literature was now reciprocated, notably in the works of the novelist Henry James and the poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, all of whom went to live in Europe. They were followed in the 1920s by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Other writers who achieved a transatlantic reputation include the dramatists Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and the poets Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, and John Berryman. The vitality of 20th-century American literature is most evident in the novel, practitioners of which include William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, and Thomas Pynchon.

The Wheatley family taught Phillis English and Christianity, and, impressed by her quick learning, they also taught her some Latin, ancient history, mythology and classical literature.

Dates: ~1612 - September 16, 1672

Occupation: poet

Also known as: Anne Dudley, Anne Dudley Bradstreet

n 1607, Jamestown became the first settlement of the British empire in North America. Its location had been chosen due to it being easily defensible as it was surrounded on three sides by water, the water was deep enough for their ships, and the land was not inhabited by Native Americans. The pilgrims had a rocky beginning with their first winter. In fact, it took a number of years before the colony became profitable for England with the introduction of tobacco by John Rolfe. In 1624, Jamestown was made a royal colony.

To make the gold the Virginia Company and King James expected, the settlers tried many enterprises, including silk production and glassmaking. All met with little success until 1613, when colonists John Rolfe developed a sweeter, less harsh-tasting strain of tobacco that became wildly popular in Europe. At last, the colony was turning a profit. Tobacco was used as money in Jamestown and used to pay salaries. While tobacco proved to be the cash crop that helped Jamestown survive as long as it did, most of the land need to grow it was stolen from the native Powhatan Indians and growing it in saleable quantities depended on the forced labor of enslaved Africans.

Preeminent American Astronomer

Winthrop gained attention in Great Britain where many of his research findings were published. The Royal Society published his works. His astronomical research included the following: 

On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, “unanimously” by the votes of 12 colonies (with New York abstaining) resolved that “These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent states.” Two days later, on July 4, the congress approved the Declaration of Independence, which formally cut the colonies’ ties with Great Britain and established the United States of America.