Pre-1900 American

**Pre-1900 American**

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) – “The Author to Her
Book,”
“Verses Upon the Burning of our House, July 18th 1666”

Mary
Rowlandson (1637-1711) – *A Narrative of*
the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson *(1682)*

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) – "The Way to
Wealth,"
*The Autobiography* (1771, 1784, 1788)

J.
Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (1735-1813) *Letters*
from an American Farmer *(1782)*

Phillis
Wheatley (1753-1784) – "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
(1773) "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield. 1770” (1773)
"On Recollection" (1773) "On Imagination" (1773) "To
S. M. a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works" (1773) “To his
Excellency General Washington”

Washington Irving (1783-1859)
– “A History of New York” (1809),
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,”
"Rip Van Winkle" (1819)

Edgar Allan Poe, *The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym* *Of Nantucket* (1838)

"The
Fall of the House of Usher" (1839)

"The
Cask of Amontillado" (1846)

"The
Tell-Tale Heart" (1844)

"The Purloined Letter,” (1843)

“The
Poetic Principle” (1848)

poems

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) –
*Nature* (1836),
“The American Scholar” (1837)
“Self-Reliance*,*” (1841)
*“The Poet” (1844)*

Margaret
Fuller (1810-1850) – *Woman in the Nineteenth Century* (1845)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864) – “Young Goodman Brown,” (1835)
“The Minister’s Black Veil,” (1836)
“The Birthmark,” (1843)
“Rappaccini’s Daughter,”  (1844)
The Blithedale Romance *(1852) (house of seven gables?)*

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) – Narrative
of the Life (1845),
What to a Slave is the 4th of July? (1852)

Herman Melville (1819-1891) – *Moby Dick* (1851)
Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)
Benito Cereno (1855)
Billy Budd (1891)

Harriet
Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) – *Uncle Tom’s Cabin* (1852)

Henry David
Thoreau (1817-1862) – *Walden* (1854)

Harriet
Jacobs (1813-1897) – *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl* (1861)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) – *Leaves of Grass*,
preface to (1855)

Emily
Dickinson (1830-1886) – “Success is counted sweetest” [ J67/Fr112] (c. 1859)
“Wild Nights – Wild Nights” [ J249/Fr269] (c. 1861)
"I'm nobody! Who are you" [ J288/Fr260] (c. 1861)
“There’s a certain slant of light” [ J258/Fr320] (c. 1861)
“I felt a funeral in my brain” [ J280/Fr340] (c. 1861)
"I taste a liquor never brewed" [ J214/Fr207] (c. 1861)
“Title divine is mine” [ J1072/Fr194] (c. 1862)
“A bird came down the walk” [ J360/Fr359] (c. 1862)
"He fumbles at your soul" [ J315/Fr477] (c.1862)
“Death sets a thing significant” [ J360/Fr640] (c. 1862)
"I'm ceded – I’ve stopped being their’s" [ J508/Fr353] (c. 1862)
“This was a poet” [ J448/Fr446] (c. 1862
“I heard a fly buzz when I died” [ J465/Fr591] (c. 1862)
“I started early – took my dog” [ J520/Fr656] (c. 1862)
“They shut me up in prose” [ J613/Fr445] (c. 1862)
"The soul selects her own society" [ J303/Fr409] (c. 1862)
"I'm “wife” – I’ve finished that" [ J199/Fr225] (c. 1862)
"It don’t sound so terrible quite as it did" [ J426/Fr384] (c. 1862)
"Mine by the right of the white election" [ J528/Fr411] (c. 1862)
“Essential oils are wrung” [ J675/Fr772] (c. 1863)
“Publication is the auction” [ J709/Fr778] (c. 1863)
“Because I could not stop for death” [ J712/Fr479] (c. 1863)
"I reckon when I count at all" [ J569/Fr533) (c.1863)
"This is my letter to the world" [ J441/Fr519] (c. 1863)
"It feels a shame to be alive" [ J444/Fr524] (c. 1863)
“My life had stood a loaded gun” [ J754/Fr764] (c. 1863)
"My portion is defeat today" [ J639/Fr704] (c. 1863)
“A loss of something ever felt I” [ J959/Fr1072] (c. 1864)
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant” [ J1129/Fr1263] (c. 1868)
“What mystery pervades a well” [ J1400/Fr1433] (c. 1877?)
"Those dying then" [ J1551/Fr1581] (c. 1882)
“Of God we ask one favor” [ J1601/Fr1675] (c. 1884)

Rebecca
Harding Davis (1831-1910) – *Life in the*
Iron Mills *(1861)*

Louisa May
Alcott (1832-1888) – *Little Women* (1868)

Mark
Twain (1835-1910) – *Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (*1884)
*Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)*

Frank
Norris (1870-1902) – *McTeague (1899),*
The Octopus (1901)

Henry
James (1843-1916) – “Daisy Miller”(1878)

*The Portrait of a Lady* (1881)
*The Turn of the Screw* (1898)

Stephen
Crane (1871-1900) – *Maggie: A Girl of the*
Streets *(1893)*

Kate
Chopin (1850-1904) – *The Awakening* (1899)

Theodore
Dresier (1871-1945) – *Sister Carrie*
(1900)

WEB
Dubois (1868-1963) – *The Souls of Black*
Folk *(1903)*

Edith
Wharton (1862-1937) – *The House of Mirth*
(1905)

Criticism
& Biography

F.O.
Matthiessen: *American Renaissance; Art*
and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman*. New York: Oxford U P,*
1968

= David S. Reynolds, *Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive*
Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville *=*
Wendy
Martin *An American Triptych: Anne*
Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich

Jane
Tompkins, *Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790 -*
1860 *(1986)*

(David
Haven Blake, *Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity* (2006))

Andrew
Delbanco, *Melville: His World and Work* (2006)

Cheryl Walker, *The*
Nightengale’s Burden: Women Poets and American Culture Before 1900

DH Lawrence, *Studies in Classic*
American Literature

Joel Porte: *The Romance in*
America*. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University P, 1969*