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Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850) The Scarlet Letter was the first important novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the leading authors of nineteenth-century romanticism in American literature. Like many of his works, the novel is set in Puritan New England and examines guilt, sin, and evil as inherent human traits.
- 1900 to 1950
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, is the first...
- Overview
We all bring a different set of experiences to a book, and...
- 1900 to 1950
The development of American literature coincided with the nation's development, especially of its identity. Calls for an "autonomous national literature" first appeared during the American Revolution, and, by the mid-18th century, the possibility of American literature exceeding its European counterparts began to take shape, as did that of the Great American Novel, this time being the genesis ...
Aug 24, 2022 · Brown’s Power of Sympathy exemplifies one of the major trends within the development of the early American novel—the use of seduction plots to elicit readers’ sympathy and warn them of the dangers of straying even the least bit from moral propriety. Perhaps the most popular novel of the era was Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple (1791).
- Georgia May
- To Kill a Mockingbird. Authored by Harper Lee. First published in 1960. 323 pages — 4.27 on Goodreads. Southern Gothic is a common subgenre found amongst Great American Novels, from Tennessee Williams to William Faulkner.
- Moby Dick. Authored by Herman Melville. First published in 1851. 654 pages — 3.53 on Goodreads. Moby Dick is now a milestone of the American Renaissance, but it didn't see success for at least seven decades after it published.
- The Great Gatsby. Authored by F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in 1925. 180 pages — 3.93 on Goodreads. Before Baz Luhrmann glitzed up The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio and a Jay-Z soundtrack, it was a classic 1920s romance novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was known for his exuberant works on the Jazz Age and regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
- The Catcher in the Rye. Authored by J. D. Salinger. First published in 1951. 277 pages — 3.80 on Goodreads. Holden Caulfield is cynical, angsty, depressed, and antisocial.
- THE CONTENDERS.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Gatsby’s magic emanates not only from its powerhouse poetic style—in which ordinary American language becomes unearthly—but from the authority with which it nails who we want to be as Americans.
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. Among all Great American Novel candidates, perhaps Moby-Dick (1851) best meets Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee’s test. [“As long as the classic needs to be protected from attack, it can never prove itself classic.”]
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird. [T]he Great American Novel is a moving target and that the space is filled by a novel that in any particular time best fulfills three main criteria
By the first decades of the 19th century, a truly American literature began to emerge. Though still derived from British literary tradition, the short stories and novels published from 1800 through the 1820s began to depict American society and explore the American landscape in an unprecedented manner.
The Yemassee (1835) and Revolutionary romances show him at his best. American literature - 19th Century, Realism, Romanticism: After the American Revolution, and increasingly after the War of 1812, American writers were exhorted to produce a literature that was truly native. As if in response, four authors of very respectable stature appeared.
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