English Major - American Literary Timeline

American Literary Timeline
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The New Land to 1750
Pre-
Native American tribes occupy what is now United States.
1492
1492 Columbus discovers Americas
1565 First permanent settlement in St. Augustine, Florida
1608 Captain John Smith writes A True Relation of Virginia
Henry Hudson writes Half Moon detailing New York harbor and Hudson
1609
River
William Bradford begins writing Of Plymouth Plantation which he
1630
would complete in 1651
1636 Harvard University founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts
1638 First printing press in North America
1640 Bay Psalm Book published: the first book printed in the colonies
1647 First free public school in Massachusetts
The New Land to 1750
Anne Bradstreet’s The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, a
1650
collection of poems was published in London
1662 Michael Wigglesworth ‘s The Day of Doom became popular
1690 The New England Primer is used in public schools
Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World reports the Salem
1693
witch executions.
Sarah Kemble Knight begins her journey which was chronicled in her
1704
Journal
1721 First theater in the colonies opens in Williamsburg, Virginia
1734 John Peter Zenger was acquitted of libel
1735 Great Awakening. A series of religious revivals
William Byrd describes his trip to Virginia in The History of the Dividing
1738
Line
Jonathan Edwards delivers his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an
1741
Angry God
The Colonial Period 1750 – 1800
1752 Benjamin Franklin’s kite and key experiment
Thomas Godfrey’s The Prince of Parthia produced as first American
1767
play
William Billings’ The New England Psalm-Singer presented new
1770
American hymns
1771 Benjamin Franklin begins his uncompleted Autobiography.
1773 Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects was published in England
1775 Patrick Henry’s “liberty or death” speech at Virginia Convention
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense contributes to the demand for
1776
independence
The Colonial Period 1750 – 1800
Letters from an American Farmer by Michel-Guillaume Jean de
1782 Crèvecœur (also known as John Hector St. John) was published in
London
1783 Noah Webster’s Spelling Book was published.
First publication of Pennsylvania Packet and General Advertiser; the
1784
first long-term daily paper.
Royall Tyler’s The Contrast, a satiric comedy, was produced in New York
1787
City
1788 The Federalist, mainly by Alexander Hamilton, appears as a book
The Power of Sympathy, the first American novel, by William Hill Brown
1789 was published anonymously
George Washington was elected President
Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of The Declaration of
1800
Independence, was elected president
A Growing Nation: 1800 – 1840
A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the
1809 Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker brings recognition to
Washington Irving
1817 William Cullen Bryant publishes Thanatopsis in a Boston magazine
Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, including Rip Van Winkle, appears to
1819
begin periodically
1821 James Fenimore Cooper’s second novel, The Spy, gains fame.
James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers introduced Naty Bumppo and
1823
Leatherstocking Tales
Leatherstocking Tales continued with Cooper’s The Last of the
1826
Mohicans
Publication of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America begins in
1827 England
Edgar Allan Poe publishes Tamerlane, his first collection of poem
A Growing Nation: 1800 – 1840
First appearance of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the
1828
English Language
Edgar Allan Poe’s Poems was published in New York. It includes “To
1830
Helen”
1832 Washington Irving’s The Alhambra was published
1833 Edgar Allan Poe’s “MS. Found in a Bottle” wins a literary contest
Ralph Waldo Emerson paved the way for New England’s literary
1836
renaissance with his essay Nature
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales was published but overlooked
1837
by critics
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” first
1839
appeared in print
James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales resumes with The
1840
Pathfinder
New England Renaissance:
1840 – 1855
1840 The Dial, a transcendentalist magazine began publication
Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes Essays
1841
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow publishes “The Skeleton in Armor”
1843 John Greenleaf Whittier publishes Lays of My Home and Other Poems
1844 Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes Essays: Second Series
Oliver Wendell Holmes publishes Poems
1846
Herman Melville publishes Typee, his first novel
1847 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow publishes Evangeline
James Russell Lowell’s A Fable for Critics and The Bigelow Papers were
1848
published
Henry David Thoreau publishes A week on the Concord and Merrimack
1849 Rivers
Death of Edgar Allan Poe
New England Renaissance:
1840 – 1855
Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter
1850
Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes Representative Man
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was published
1851 Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The House of Seven Gables
The New York Times begins publication
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin
1852
Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Blithedale Romance
1853 John Greenleaf Whittier publishes The Chapel of the Hermits
1854 Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden
1855 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow publishes The Song of Hiawatha
Division, War, and Reconciliation
(The American Civil War): 1855 – 1865
Walt Whitman publishes the first edition of Leaves of Grass
1855 My Bondage and My Freedom, Frederick Douglass’ second
autobiography makes its appearance
1858 Oliver Wendell Holmes publishes The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays were published as The Conduct of Life
1860
Henry Timrod’s Poems appeared
1861 Lincoln was inaugurated in March; Civil War begins in April
1862 Emily Dickinson wrote most of her superb poems.
1865 Lincoln was assassinated
Realism and the Frontier:
1865 – 1915
Mark Twain gains recognition with “The Notorious Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County”
1867
Lucy McKim (along with others) publishes Slave Song of the United
States
1868 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott gains popularity among children
1870 Bret Harte publishes The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Stories
1876 Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
1883 Mark Twain publishes Life on the Mississippi
1884 Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn appears
1885 William Dean Howells publishes The Rise of Silas Lapham
1887 Sidney Lanier’s Poems was published six years after his death
Four years after her death, the first volume of Emily Dickinson’s Poems
1890
was released
Realism and the Frontier:
1865 – 1915
1891 Hamlin Garland publishes Main-Travelled Roads
1893 Ambrose Bierce publishes Can Such Things Be?
1894 Kate Chopin’s Bayou Folk published
1895 Stephen Crane publishes The Red Badge of Courage
Paul Lawrence Dunbar publishes Lyrics of Lowly Life
1896 Sarah Orne Jewett’s masterpiece The Country of the Pointed Firs
appears
1897 Edwin Arlington Robinson publishes The Children of the Night
1903 Jack London publishes The Call of the Wild
Willa Cather publishes The Troll Graden
1905
Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth appears
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
1909
founded
The Modern Age: 1915 – 1946
1916 Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg appears
1919 Sherwood Anderson publishes Winesburg, Ohio
1920 Sinclair Lewis publishes Main Street
1921 Beyond the Horizon, Eugene O’Neill’s play wins Pultizer Prize
E. E. Cummings publishes The Enormous Room
1922
T. S. Eliot publishes The Waste Land
1923 Wallace Stevens publishes Harmonium
F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby
1925
William Carlos Williams publishes In the American Grain
Langston Hughes publishes The Weary Blues
1926
Ernest Hemingway publishes The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway publishes A Farewell to Arms
1929 Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel appears
William Faulkner publishes The Sound and the Fury
The Modern Age: 1915 – 1946
Katherine Anne Porter publishes Flowering Judas
1930
John Dos Passos publishes The 42nd Parallel, first novel in U.S.A. trilogy
1931 Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, wins the Pulitzer Prize
1938 Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town, opens
1939 John Steinbeck publishes The Grapes of Wrath
1941 A Curtain of Green by Eudora Welty appears
1945 End of World War II
Contemporary Writers:
1946 – present
1945 Gwendolyn Brooke publishes A Street in Bronzeville
Robert Penn Warren publishes All King’s Men
1946
Carson McCullers publishes The Member of the Wedding
1948 Norman Mailer publishes The Naked and the Dead
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller is first produced. It wins Pulitzer
1949
Prize
1951 J. D. Salinger publishes The Catcher in the Rye
1952 Ralph Ellison publishes Invisible Man
1953 Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March appears
Flannery O’Connor publishes A Good Man is Hard to Find
1955
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams opens on Broadway
1959 Robert Lowell’s Life Studies appears
1960 John Updike publishes Rabbit Run
Contemporary Writers:
1946 – present
1961 Joseph Heller publishes Catch-22
Bernard Malamud’s novel, The Fixer, wins the Pulitzer Prize
1966
Sylvia Plath’s last collection of poems, Ariel, appears
1968 Joan Didion publishes Slouching Towards Bethlehem
1969 Joyce Carol Oates publishes Them
1973 Toni Morrison publishes Sula
1982 Alice Walker publishes The Color Purple
Reference
Prentice Hall literature. Englewood Cliffs, N.J:

Prentice Hall, 1989. Print.

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