Twentieth century literary scholars have discovered the manuscripts of a contemporary of

Wigglesworth poet named Edward Taylor who produced perhaps the finest seventeenth
century American verse. Much of his poetry is a kind of mental exercise of “Meditation” to
prepare for the duties as a minister, Taylor filled his works with vivid imagery. Edward
Taylor never published any of his poetry. In fact the first of Edward Taylor's colonial poetry
did not reach print until the third decade of the twentieth century. Edward Taylor, like
many of the early colonial writers, was an immigrant whose writing was influenced by his
early experiences in England.
William Bradford was a member of the Separatist movement within Puritanism,
Bradford migrated to Holland in 1609 in search of religious freedom and lived 11 years in
Leiden. In 1620 he helped organize the Mayflower's expedition to the New World.
William Bradford was a deeply pious (религиозный, праведный), self-
educated man who had learned several languages, including Hebrew
(древнееврейский язык) in order to see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of
God in their native beauty. His participation to Holland and the Mayflower voyage to
Plymouth, and his duties as a governor, made him ideally suited to be the first historian of
his colony. His history, Of Plymouth Plantation (1651), is a clear and compelling account of
the colony’s beginning, and a unique source of information about the Puritans' voyage and
the challenges that faced the settlers.
As the decades passed new generations of American-born writers became important.
Boston, Massachusetts was the birthplace of one such American-born writer. His name was
Benjamin Franklin.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was a brilliant, industrious, and versatile [
(разносторонний) man. (Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, statesman, and
diplomat, he was the most famous and respected private figure of his time.) Starting as a
poor boy in a family of seventeen children, he became famous on both sides of the Atlantic
as a statesman, scientist, and author. Benjamin Franklin was one of the leaders in the war
for Independence, an ambassador, inventor (developed phonetic alphabet), a member of
Russian Academy, was an honored professor at Harvard and Yale University. Benjamin
Franklin signed Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the USA and The Treaty of
Paris. Despite his fame, however he always remained a man of industry and simple tastes.
He wrote gracefully as well as clearly, with a wit which often gave an edge to his words.
His most famous work is his Autobiography that he began to write when he was 65 years
old.
Franklin's Autobiography is a many things manuscript. First of all it is an inspiring
account of a poor boy's rise to a high position, how he studied languages, about family
matters, about club he founded. In fact the Autobiography is a how-to-do-it book, a book on
the art of self-improvement.
Франклин предсказал появление крионики за 200 лет до открытия, изображен на
банкнотах, не будучи президентом. Цитаты: мастер находить оправдания, редко
бывает мастером в чем-нибудь еще, что могут сделать законы в политике без морали,
время – деньги, одно “сегодня” стоит двух “завтра”, трудно поставить прямо пустой
мешок, отсутствующие всегда виноваты.
Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano (belongs to great black writers) was born in approximately 1745 in what
is now Nigeria. He wrote an autobiography about his life, which recounts being kidnapped
from Africa as a child and sold into slavery. He bought his freedom and became part of the
abolition movement. Equiano’s account is considered an originator of the slave narrative. He
died on March 3, 1797, in London. This definitive biography tells the story of the former
slave Olaudah Equiano (1745?-97), who in his day was the English-speaking world's most
renowned person of African descent. Equiano's greatest legacy is his classic 1789
autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus
Vassa, the African.
Washington Irving
The practical world of Benjamin Franklin stands in sharp contrast to the fantasy world
created by Washington Irving (1783-1859), named after George Washington the first
president of the United States. Born in NYC – till 1664 New Amsterdam, in the family of
immigrants. Irving provided a young nation with humorous, fictional accounts of the
colonial past. Many of Washington Irving’s other writings take the reader to foreign lands,
especially to Spain at the time of the Moors (мавританство). But his tales of colonial
America remain his most enduring contributions to American and world literature.
Early in his life Irving developed a passion for books. He read Robinson Crusoe, Sinbad
the Sailor, and The World Displyed (stories about voyages and travels). He studied law
privately in the offices of Henry Masterton (1798), Brockholst Livingston (1801), and John
Ogde Hoffman (1802), but practiced only briefly. From 1804 to 1806 he travelled widely
Europe. During the war of 1812 Irving served as a military aide to New York Governor
Tompkins in the U.S. Army.
Irving's career as a writer started in journals and newspapers. He contributed to Morning
Chronicle (1802-03), which was edited by his brother Peter, and published Salmagundi
(1807-08), writing in collaboration with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding.
Irving's success in social life and literature was shadowed by a personal tragedy. He was
engaged to be married to Matilda Hoffman, who died at the age of seventeen, in 1809. Later
he wrote in a private letter, addressed to Mrs. Forster, as an answer to her inquiry why he had
not been married: "For years I could not talk on the subject of this hopeless regret; I could
not even mention her name; but her image was continually before me, and I dreamt of her
incessantly." However, it has also been claimed that Irving was a homosexual.
Through "Rip Van Winkle” and several other stories Irving created might be called an
American mythology. This mythology is made up of stories of the American past so widely
read and told that nearly every American recognizes them.
James Fennimore Cooper
Another writer, James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851) contributed two of the great
stock figures of American mythology the daring frontiersman and the bold Indian Cooper's
exciting stories of the American frontier have won a large audience for his books in many
parts of the world. Some students of literature may find fault with the artificial speech and
actions of Cooper's heroines. Yet the figures in his novels helped create that part of
American mythology most popular today the story of the cowboy and the winning of the
American West.
At the time of his death on September 14, 1851, Cooper was more successful and
respected abroad than at home. Out of step with his countrymen, his work was very
influential to European writers like Honore de Balzac and Leo Tolstoy. Yet, the weaknesses
of Fenimore's fiction are quite well known and wide-spread. In the grand enterprise, even
today, everyone has read books and seen films that are directly and indirectly affected by
Cooper's conception of Natty Bumppo and his creation of the American novel.
Philip Freneau
While prose was contributing to the development of an American mythology, the first
poetry in the United States was also being written Philip Freneau one of the first poets of
the new nation wrote in a style which owed something to English models. His subject matter,
however makes him a truly American poet In collaboration with Hugh Brackenndge another
early national writer, Freneau wrote a college commencement poem in 1772 entitled "The
Rising Glory of America ' The future of his country was always a subject of interest for poet
and citizen Freneau.
While on sea duly he was captured by the British and placed aboard a prison ship, an
experience which inspired a long poem entitled ' The British Prison Ship" . He wrote a
number of other long poems, but he was at his best in his short lyrics, such as "The Wild
Honey Suckle ". Many of these short works, including "On the Emigration to America.' "The
Indian Burying Ground," and "To the Memory of the Brave Americans," deal with American
subjects and it is for these poems that Freneau is best remembered today.
William Cullen Bryant
If Freneau can be considered one of America's first great nationalist poets, William
Cullen Bryant merits a claim to being one of America s first naturalist poets. Born after the
Revolutionary War, Bryant turned to nature as a source for poetic inspiration
“Thanatopsis," the name of his most famous nature poem, is a Greek word meaning “view of
death ".
After "Thanatopsis" Bryant wrote many lyrics which were lighter in tone. Through these
poems, too, he tried to teach a lesson to the reader. In some of Bryant's poems his love of
nature was modified to include the belief in a God who guides mans destiny both in life and
in death. 'To a Waterfowl," one of Bryant's best known poems.
Many of Bryant's poems have themes which are typical of nineteenth century American
verse. He writes about the spiritual sustenance to be found in nature and of the beauty of
brooks, trees, and flowers. He idealizes the advantages of life in the country over life in the
city.
Edgar Allan Poe
The next notable American poet, Edgar Allan Poe was also a master of the prose tale. A
gifted, tormented man, Poe thought about the proper function of literature far more than any
of his predecessors, with the result that he became the first great American literary critic. He
developed a theory of poetry which was in disagreement with what most poets of the mid-
nineteenth century believed. Unlike many poets Poe was not an advocate of long poems.
According to him, only a short poem could sustain the level of emotion in the reader that was
generated by all good poetry.
In literature and the arts there are certain great trends and movements that appear and
reappear. One is called Romanticism, and Poe was a major Romantic writer. The individual
instead of the group, the wild instead of the tame, the irregular instead of the regular are
features stressed by Romantic writers.
Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. That makes him Capricorn, on the
cusp of Aquarius. His parents were David and Elizabeth Poe. David was born in Baltimore
on July 18, 1784. Elizabeth Arnold came to the U.S. from England in 1796 and married
David Poe after her first husband died in 1805. They had three children, Henry, Edgar, and
Rosalie.
Elizabeth Poe died in 1811, when Edgar was 2 years old. She had separated from her
husband and had taken her three kids with her. Henry went to live with his grandparents
while Edgar was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan and Rosalie was taken in by another
family. John Allan was a successful merchant, so Edgar grew up in good surroundings and
went to good schools.
When Poe was 6, he went to school in England for 5 years. He learned Latin and French,
as well as math and history. He later returned to school in America and continued his
studies. Edgar Allan went to the University of Virginia in 1826. He was 17. Even though
John Allan had plenty of money, he only gave Edgar about a third of what he needed.
Although Edgar had done well in Latin and French, he started to drink heavily and quickly
became in debt. He had to quit school less than a year later.
Poe in the Army
Edgar Allan had no money, no job skills, and had been shunned by John Allan. Edgar
went to Boston and joined the U.S. Army in 1827. He was 18. He did reasonably well in the
Army and attained the rank of sergeant major.
Final Days
In June of 1849, Poe left New York and went to Philadelphia, where he visited his friend
John Sartain. Poe left Philadelphia in July and came to Richmond. He stayed at the Swan
Tavern Hotel but joined "The Sons of Temperance" in an effort to stop drinking. He
renewed a boyhood romance with Sarah Royster Shelton and planned to marry her in
October.
On September 27, Poe left Richmond for New York. He went to Philadelphia and stayed
with a friend named James P. Moss. On September 30, he meant to go to New York but
supposedly took the wrong train to Baltimore. On October 3, Poe was found at Gunner's
Hall, a public house at 44 East Lombard Street, and was taken to the hospital. He lapsed in
and out of consciousness but was never able to explain exactly what happened to him. Edgar
Allan Poe died in the hospital on Sunday, October 7, 1849.
The mystery surrounding Poe's death has led to many myths and urban legends. The
reality is that no one knows for sure what happened during the last few days of his life. Did
Poe die from alcoholism? Was he mugged? Did he have rabies? A more detailed exploration
of Poe's death can be found here.
The next great American Romanticist, however, drew on America for both characters
and settings, and his work, though theoretical and philosophical does mirror the attitudes and
mores of the time. He was a shy New Englander named Nathaniel Hawthorne Although he
wrote no poetry, his short stories and novels still rank among the best that America has
produced.
Though Hawthorne wrote about various subjects and various times, his favorite theme was
Puritan New England. The Puritan punishment of sexual sin - adultery, becomes the vehicle
for his best novel, The Scarlet Letter, a treatment of the effects of sin on the human spirit.
Hawthorne then devoted himself to this novel, The Scarlet Letter. He zealously
(усердно) worked on the novel with a determination he had not known before. His intense
suffering infused the novel with imaginative energy, leading him to describe it as a "hell-
fired story". On February 3, 1850, Hawthorne read the final pages to his wife. He wrote, "It
broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache, which I look upon as a
triumphant success."
The Scarlet Letter was an immediate success that allowed Hawthorne to devote himself
completely to his writing. He left Salem for a temporary residence in Lenox, a small town in
the Berkshires, where he completed the romance The House of the Seven Gables in 1851.
Hawthorne passed away on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire, after a long
period of illness during which he suffered severe bouts of dementia. By this time, he had
completed several chapters of what was to be a romance, and this work was published
posthumously as The Dolliver Romance.