Periods of American Literature

Pre-Colonial Period (-1600)

Colonial/Early National Period (17th century - 1830)
Romantic Period (1830-1870)
Realism and Naturalism (1870-1910)
The Modernist Period (1910-1945)
Contemporary Period (1945-)

Pre-Colonial Period (-1600)

- Mainly consisted of oral traditions (myths) by the Indigenous people of America.

- The Coyote was a central mythical figure of the age.
- Another such figure was the Raven in other parts of America.
- Also popular were the ‘Kachinas’, ancestral spirit beings.
- Creation myths also abounded.

Colonial/Early National Period (17th century - 1830)

- The literature was largely practical and straightforward and derivative of

contemporary British style.
- John Smith wrote histories of Virginia, famously narrating accounts of the
Powhatan girl, Pocahontas (1608-1624)
- American Revolution between 1765-1783
- The USA attained independence in 1776.
- Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography was written between the 1770s and 80s.
- Phillis Wheatley is the first Black poet with her collection Poems on various
subjects, religious and moral (1773)
- William Hill Brown wrote the first novel - The Power of Sympathy (1789)
- From 1800 onwards, the literature of the USA became original and dealt with
American experiences.
- Washington Irving is considered to be the father of American short stories.
Popularly wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle.

Romantic Period (1830-1870)

Romanticism took hold in Europe in the late 18th century and was embraced by the
American writers in the early 19th century.
 - Edgar Allan Poe remains the most popular author of the decade. He began
detective fiction with his Murders in the Rue Morgue. His poem Raven and his
short stories The Tell-Tale Heart, Fall of the House of Usher, and The Cask of
Amontillado.
- ‘Transcendentalism’ as a movement began in the 1830s and was characterized
by an idealistic vision of life, the innate goodness of human beings, and the
supremacy of insight over logic.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson’s influential essays such as ‘Nature’, ‘Self-Reliance’,
‘The Over-Soul’, ‘Circles’, ‘The Poet’, and ‘Experience’.
- Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden and the essay ‘Civil Disobedience’.
- Margaret Fuller wrote Woman in the Nineteenth Century, an early Feminist text.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote novels such as The Scarlet Letter and The House
of the Seven Gables and the short story Young Goodman Brown.
- Herman Melville wrote the classic Moby Dick and other novels such as Typee
and Billy Bud, Sailor.
- Walt Whitman’s collection Leaves of Grass (1855), his popular poems include O
Captain, My Captain, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, a Noiseless
Patient Spider.
- William Wells Brown wrote the first Black American novel Clotel, and the first
African American play The Escape.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the famous Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852.
- Harriet Jacobs published her autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
in 1861, the same year that

Civil War began (1861-1865)

- Emily Dickinson lived a secluded life and her popular poems are Hope is a thing
with Feathers, Because I Could Not Stop For Death, I’m Nobody, Who are You?,
Wild Nights-Wild Nights.
- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote The adventures of Tom
Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi and his breakout short story
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
- Henry James’ novels had psychological realism in them - The Portrait of the
Lady, The ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl.

Modernist Period (1910-1945)

- F Scott Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby (1925),
Tender is the Night
- Richard Wright - Native Son
 - Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom
the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast.
- William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury, as I Lay Dying, Light in August,
Absalom, Absalom!
- John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden
-

Australian Literature

The earliest form of literature in Australia were the oral traditions. While the indigenous
oral works were not recorded back in the day, they are often documented in recent
literature. Sally Morgan’s autobiography ‘My Place’ captures the aboriginal traditions
and the oral literary works passed down through the generations.

Written Australian Literature began with the colonial settlers in the late 18th century
where authors wrote diaries and journals. They covered the struggles of the early
settlers and the harsh realities of life in an unfamiliar environment. One of the earliest
works published in Australia was William Wentworth’s Australasia. Watkin Tench also
covered the early years in his non-fiction.

During the late 19th to early 20th centuries, Australian Literature took on a more
nationalistic zeal, with literary works championing their bush identity. Banjo Paterson
and Henry Lawson were the two preeminent authors from this period. Paterson’s
Poetical Works published in 1902 contained poems such as Waltzing Matilda and Man
From Snowy River romanticized and celebrated the Bush lifestyle.

On the other hand, Henry Lawson depicted the visceral experiences of the Bush people
in his short stories, with his While the Billy Boils considered a classic. Lawson is often
considered to be the greatest short story writer from the continent. Lawson and
Paterson engaged in a debate over their conceptions of the Bush lifestyle. It was
famously known as the Bulletin debate.

The Federation of Australia in 1901 fostered a sense of nationhood, with authors finding
their voice and originality, away from imitating their British or American counterparts. My
Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin offered a pioneering feminist perspective of life in
Australia. Joseph Furphy, Kenneth Slessor, Jeanie Gunne and other writers employed
Modernist themes and explored complex social and psychological frameworks in their
texts.
The Post-War period was dominated by the most popular Australian author, Patrick
White the 1973 Nobel Prize winner from Australia, and the only author from the country
to win the award. White was forged as a writer by the Second World War as it was only
his first novel that came out before the war titled Happy Valley. After the war, he wrote
war novels including The Aunt’s Story and Tree of Man which established him as one of
the foremost authors of the generation.

His 1957 novel Voss is considered to be his masterpiece, tracing the doomed expedition
of a German explorer in the Australian outbanks. Voss also won the inaugural Miles
Franklin award.