| Writer | Works & Details |
|---|---|
| William Bradford (1590-1657) | Of Plymouth Plantation (1630-51): History of Plymouth Colony Mayflower Compact (1620): Signed by Pilgrims Governor: Plymouth Colony for 30 years |
| Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) | First published American poet The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650): First book of poems published by American colonist "To My Dear and Loving Husband": "If ever two were one, then surely we" "The Author to Her Book": Compares book to "ill-formed offspring" Puritan poet |
| Edward Taylor (1642-1729) | Puritan metaphysical poet "Huswifery": Extended metaphor (spinning wheel = divine grace) Preparatory Meditations: 200+ poems Published posthumously (1939) |
| Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) | "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741): Famous fire-and-brimstone sermon Image: God holds sinners over hell like spider over fire Great Awakening preacher Freedom of the Will (1754) |
| Writer | Works & Details |
|---|---|
| Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) | Autobiography (1791): Unfinished, published posthumously Poor Richard's Almanack (1732-58): Annual publication, aphorisms Famous sayings: "Early to bed, early to rise...", "A penny saved is a penny earned" 13 Virtues: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, Humility The Way to Wealth (1758) |
| Thomas Paine (1737-1809) | Common Sense (1776): Pamphlet advocating independence The American Crisis (1776-83): "These are the times that try men's souls" The Rights of Man (1791): Defense of French Revolution The Age of Reason (1794-95): Deism, anti-organized religion Born: England, emigrated 1774 |
| Washington Irving (1783-1859) | "Rip Van Winkle" (1819): Sleeps 20 years in Catskill Mountains "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820): Ichabod Crane + Headless Horseman The Sketch Book (1819-20): Collection containing both above First American writer to gain international fame Pen name: Geoffrey Crayon |
| James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) | Leatherstocking Tales (5 novels): Featuring Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye) Chronological order: (1) The Deerslayer (2) The Last of the Mohicans (3) The Pathfinder (4) The Pioneers (5) The Prairie Publication order: Pioneers (1823) first, Deerslayer (1841) last The Last of the Mohicans (1826): Most famous, Chingachgook and Uncas First major American novelist |
| Writer | Works & Details |
|---|---|
| Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) | "The American Scholar" (1837): Harvard Phi Beta Kappa address - "America's intellectual Declaration of Independence" "Self-Reliance" (1841): Essay - "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist" "Trust thyself" Nature (1836): Foundation of Transcendentalism - "transparent eyeball" passage "The Divinity School Address" (1838): Controversial "The Over-Soul" (1841) Essays: First Series (1841), Second Series (1844) Leader of Transcendentalism The Dial: Transcendentalist journal (editor) |
| Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) | Walden (1854): Subtitle "Life in the Woods" - 2 years at Walden Pond (1845-47) Structure: 18 chapters, covers one year Famous quotes: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately" "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" "Simplify, simplify" "Civil Disobedience" (1849): Essay on resistance to unjust government Inspiration for: Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. Jailed: Refused to pay poll tax (opposed Mexican-American War and slavery) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) |
| Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) | The Scarlet Letter (1850): Hester Prynne + Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl (daughter), Roger Chillingworth (husband) Scarlet "A": Adultery → Able → Angel Setting: 17th century Puritan Boston Custom House: Introductory sketch The House of the Seven Gables (1851): Pyncheon family curse The Blithedale Romance (1852): Based on Brook Farm experience The Marble Faun (1860): Set in Rome Short Stories: "Young Goodman Brown", "The Minister's Black Veil", "Rappaccini's Daughter", "The Birth-Mark" Twice-Told Tales (1837): First collection Themes: Sin, guilt, Puritan legacy, moral ambiguity |
| Herman Melville (1819-1891) | Moby-Dick (1851): Subtitle "The Whale" Characters: Captain Ahab (obsessed), Ishmael (narrator), Queequeg (harpooner), Starbuck (first mate), white whale Moby Dick Opening: "Call me Ishmael" Ship: Pequod Chapters: 135 (including cetology chapters) Ahab's obsession: Whale bit off his leg Ending: All except Ishmael die; survives on Queequeg's coffin Commercial failure in lifetime, rediscovered 1920s Billy Budd (1924): Novella, published posthumously Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853): "I would prefer not to" Typee (1846): First novel, popular Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849), White-Jacket (1850) Pierre (1852): Critical/commercial disaster Battle-Pieces (1866): Civil War poetry |
| Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) | Poetry: "The Raven" (1845) - "Nevermore", Lenore "Annabel Lee" (1849) - "kingdom by the sea" "The Bells" (1849) - onomatopoeia "Ulalume" (1847), "To Helen" (1831) Short Stories: "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) - Roderick Usher, Madeline "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843) - "I heard his heart beating" "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) - Montresor walls up Fortunato "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) - C. Auguste Dupin (detective) "The Purloined Letter" (1844), "The Black Cat" (1843), "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842) Only novel: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) Criticism: "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) - explains "The Raven" "The Poetic Principle" (1850) Father of: Detective fiction, American Gothic Death: Mysterious circumstances, age 40, Baltimore |
| Walt Whitman (1819-1892) | Leaves of Grass (1855): First edition (12 poems), 9 editions total (deathbed 1891-92) Expanded throughout life "Song of Myself": Central poem, 52 sections Opening: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself" Free verse pioneer in American poetry "O Captain! My Captain!" (1865): Elegy for Abraham Lincoln "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (1865): Lincoln elegy "I Hear America Singing" Democratic Vistas (1871): Prose Civil War: Volunteer nurse, wrote Drum-Taps (1865) Style: Catalogues, parallelism, long lines, democratic vision, celebration of body and soul |
| Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) | Published: Only 10 poems in lifetime (anonymously), ~1800 poems total First collection: 1890 (posthumous, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson) Famous poems: "Because I could not stop for Death" (Death = gentleman caller, carriage ride) "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died" "Hope is the thing with feathers" "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" "There's a certain Slant of light" "Wild Nights—Wild Nights!" Style: Dashes, unusual capitalization, slant rhymes, compressed syntax Themes: Death, immortality, nature, love, identity Reclusive life in Amherst, Massachusetts |
| Writer | Works & Details |
|---|---|
| Mark Twain (1835-1910) | Real name: Samuel Langhorne Clemens Pen name origin: Riverboat term ("mark twain" = 2 fathoms deep, safe water) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876): Boyhood, St. Petersburg (fictional Missouri town), Becky Thatcher, Injun Joe, Aunt Polly, Huck Finn Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884): Sequel, Huck + Jim (escaped slave) on Mississippi raft Called: "The Great American Novel" Hemingway: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn" Controversy: Dialect, racial language The Prince and the Pauper (1881) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) Life on the Mississippi (1883): Memoir The Innocents Abroad (1869): Travel book, first major success Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865): First story to gain attention |
| Henry James (1843-1916) | Born: New York, lived in Europe (1875 onward), British citizen (1915) Brother: William James (philosopher/psychologist) The Portrait of a Lady (1881): Isabel Archer, Gilbert Osmond, Ralph Touchett The Ambassadors (1903): Lambert Strether in Paris The Wings of the Dove (1902): Milly Theale (dying heiress), Kate Croy, Merton Densher The Golden Bowl (1904): Maggie Verver, Prince Amerigo Daisy Miller (1878): Novella, American girl in Europe The Turn of the Screw (1898): Gothic ghost story, governess, ghosts (Peter Quint, Miss Jessel), ambiguous Washington Square (1880): Catherine Sloper, Dr. Sloper The Bostonians (1886) Style: Psychological realism, international theme (Americans in Europe), complex sentences, stream of consciousness Critical works: "The Art of Fiction" (1884), prefaces to New York Edition |
| William Dean Howells (1837-1920) | "Dean of American Letters" The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885): Self-made businessman A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) Criticism and Fiction (1891): Literary criticism Editor: The Atlantic Monthly Championed realism in American literature |
| Stephen Crane (1871-1900) | The Red Badge of Courage (1895): Civil War novel, Henry Fleming (youth) Never experienced combat when he wrote it Naturalist/Impressionist style Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893): Bowery slum life, naturalism "The Open Boat" (1897): Story based on own shipwreck experience Poetry: The Black Riders (1895), War Is Kind (1899) Death: Tuberculosis, age 28 |
| Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) | Sister Carrie (1900): Carrie Meeber, George Hurstwood, Chicago/New York Controversial: Publisher suppressed (sexual content) An American Tragedy (1925): Clyde Griffiths murders pregnant girlfriend Based on: Real murder case (Chester Gillette) Naturalist - determinism, survival of fittest Jennie Gerhardt (1911) The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), The Stoic (1947): Trilogy about Frank Cowperwood |
| Jack London (1876-1916) | The Call of the Wild (1903): Buck (dog), Yukon, "Buck heard the call of the wild" White Fang (1906): Reverse of Call (wild to domesticated) The Sea-Wolf (1904): Wolf Larsen (brutal captain) Martin Eden (1909): Autobiographical, writer's struggle "To Build a Fire" (1908): Man freezes to death in Yukon The Iron Heel (1908): Dystopian Socialist views, naturalism Klondike Gold Rush experience |
| Writer | Works & Details |
|---|---|
| F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) | The Great Gatsby (1925): Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan, Nick Carraway (narrator), Jordan Baker Setting: Long Island 1922 - West Egg (new money) vs. East Egg (old money) Green light: At end of Daisy's dock (symbol) Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg: Billboard in Valley of Ashes Ending: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" Gatsby's real name: James Gatz Tender Is the Night (1934): Dick Diver (psychiatrist), Nicole This Side of Paradise (1920): First novel, Amory Blaine The Beautiful and Damned (1922) The Last Tycoon (1941): Unfinished, Monroe Stahr (Hollywood producer) Short Stories: "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz", "Babylon Revisited", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" Wife: Zelda Fitzgerald (mental illness) "Jazz Age" chronicler |
| Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) | The Sun Also Rises (1926): Jake Barnes (impotent WWI veteran), Lady Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn, Paris/Pamplona Title from: Ecclesiastes A Farewell to Arms (1929): Frederic Henry + Catherine Barkley, WWI Italy, rain symbolism Ending: Catherine dies in childbirth For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940): Robert Jordan, Spanish Civil War, bridge demolition Title from: John Donne poem The Old Man and the Sea (1952): Santiago (old Cuban fisherman) + marlin, Pulitzer Prize 1953 Nobel Prize: 1954 Short Stories: "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", "Hills Like White Elephants", "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place", "The Killers" In Our Time (1925): First story collection Death in the Afternoon (1932): Bullfighting non-fiction A Moveable Feast (1964): Paris memoir, published posthumously "Iceberg Theory": Omit obvious, show only tip Style: Minimalist, sparse, "declarative sentences", understatement Death: Suicide, shotgun, 1961 |
| William Faulkner (1897-1962) | The Sound and the Fury (1929): Compson family, 4 sections (Benjy, Quentin, Jason, Dilsey) Stream of consciousness As I Lay Dying (1930): Bundren family, 15 narrators, Addie's corpse transported Absalom, Absalom! (1936): Thomas Sutpen's dynasty Light in August (1932): Joe Christmas (mixed race) Sanctuary (1931): Temple Drake The Wild Palms (1939) Yoknapatawpha County: Fictional Mississippi setting (most novels) Nobel Prize: 1949 Nobel speech: "man will not merely endure: he will prevail" Short Stories: "A Rose for Emily" (Emily Grierson, Homer Barron's corpse), "Barn Burning" Go Down, Moses (1942): "The Bear" Intruder in the Dust (1948) |
| John Steinbeck (1902-1968) | The Grapes of Wrath (1939): Joad family, Dust Bowl Oklahoma to California, Tom Joad, Ma Joad, Jim Casy (preacher), Rose of Sharon Ending: Rose of Sharon breastfeeds starving man Pulitzer Prize: 1940 Of Mice and Men (1937): Novella - George Milton + Lennie Small (mentally disabled), "tend the rabbits", Curley's wife, Candy's dog Ending: George shoots Lennie East of Eden (1952): Trask and Hamilton families, Cain and Abel retelling, Salinas Valley California Cannery Row (1945): Monterey, Doc The Pearl (1947): Novella, Kino finds pearl Tortilla Flat (1935) In Dubious Battle (1936): Migrant workers' strike Nobel Prize: 1962 Travels with Charley (1962): Road trip with dog |
| Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) | First American to win Nobel Prize for Literature (1930) Main Street (1920): Carol Kennicott, Gopher Prairie (small-town conformity) Babbitt (1922): George F. Babbitt (materialistic businessman), Zenith city "Babbittry": Term for conformist materialism Arrowsmith (1925): Martin Arrowsmith (doctor/scientist), refused Pulitzer Elmer Gantry (1927): Hypocritical evangelist Dodsworth (1929): Sam Dodsworth It Can't Happen Here (1935): Dystopian, fascism in America |
| Poet | Key Works & Details |
|---|---|
| Robert Frost (1874-1963) | "The Road Not Taken" (1916): "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923): "miles to go before I sleep" "Mending Wall" (1914): "Good fences make good neighbors" "After Apple-Picking" (1914) "Birches" (1916) "The Death of the Hired Man" (1914): Silas "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (1923) "Fire and Ice" (1923) 4 Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (1924, 1931, 1937, 1943) New England setting, traditional forms, conversational tone JFK inauguration (1961) - read "The Gift Outright" |
| Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) | "The Snow Man": "mind of winter" "Sunday Morning": Woman contemplating mortality "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" "The Emperor of Ice-Cream": "Let be be finale of seem" "The Idea of Order at Key West" Harmonium (1923): First collection Day job: Insurance executive (Hartford) Philosophy: Imagination vs. reality, poetry as supreme fiction |
| William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) | "The Red Wheelbarrow": "so much depends / upon" "This Is Just to Say": Plums in icebox "Spring and All" Paterson (1946-58): 5-book epic poem about New Jersey city "No ideas but in things": Objectivist credo Day job: Physician/pediatrician Free verse, everyday American speech |
| Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) | "Chicago" (1914): "Hog Butcher for the World" "Fog": "on little cat feet" "Grass": War poem Chicago Poems (1916) Abraham Lincoln biography (6 volumes): Pulitzer Prize People's poet, free verse |
| E.E. Cummings (1894-1962) | Lowercase name: e.e. cummings (stylistic choice) "anyone lived in a pretty how town" "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in" "Buffalo Bill's" "in Just-" Experimental typography, unconventional punctuation/capitalization The Enormous Room (1922): Prose, WWI imprisonment in France |
| Playwright | Key Works & Details |
|---|---|
| Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) | First major American dramatist Nobel Prize: 1936 (only American dramatist to win) 4 Pulitzer Prizes for Drama Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956): Autobiographical, Tyrone family, morphine addiction (mother), posthumous Pulitzer The Iceman Cometh (1946): Harry Hope's saloon, Hickey Desire Under the Elms (1924): Ephraim Cabot, Abbie Mourning Becomes Electra (1931): Trilogy, Civil War setting, Mannon family, based on Oresteia The Hairy Ape (1922): Yank (stoker) Anna Christie (1922): Pulitzer Strange Interlude (1928): 9 acts, asides reveal thoughts, Pulitzer Ah, Wilderness! (1933): Comedy (rare for O'Neill) The Emperor Jones (1920) Expressionism, Greek tragedy influence |
| Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) | Real name: Thomas Lanier Williams III The Glass Menagerie (1944): Amanda Wingfield, Laura (glass animals), Tom (narrator), Jim O'Connor A Streetcar Named Desire (1947): Blanche DuBois, Stanley Kowalski, Stella, New Orleans, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers", Pulitzer Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955): Brick, Maggie ("the Cat"), Big Daddy, Pulitzer The Night of the Iguana (1961) Summer and Smoke (1948) Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) The Rose Tattoo (1951) Southern Gothic, psychological realism, sexuality, decay |
| Arthur Miller (1915-2005) | Death of a Salesman (1949): Willy Loman, Biff and Happy (sons), Linda, "attention must be paid", Pulitzer The Crucible (1953): Salem witch trials, allegory for McCarthyism, John Proctor, Abigail Williams All My Sons (1947): Joe Keller, faulty airplane parts A View from the Bridge (1955): Eddie Carbone, longshoreman The Misfits (1961): Screenplay for Marilyn Monroe After the Fall (1964): About marriage to Monroe Wife: Marilyn Monroe (1956-61) HUAC testimony: Refused to name names (1956) |
| Question Type | Answer/Strategy |
|---|---|
| First published American poet? | Anne Bradstreet (1650, Tenth Muse) |
| First major American novelist? | James Fenimore Cooper (Leatherstocking Tales) |
| First American Nobel Prize? | Sinclair Lewis (1930) |
| Transcendentalism leader? | Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature 1836) |
| Most famous poem opening? | "Call me Ishmael" (Moby-Dick) |
| Longest American novel? | Moby-Dick (135 chapters) |
| Most Nobel Prizes (drama)? | Eugene O'Neill (1936, 4 Pulitzers) |
| How many poems did Dickinson publish? | ~10 in lifetime, ~1800 total |
| Hemingway's last published novel? | Old Man and the Sea (1952) |
| Faulkner's most experimental? | The Sound and the Fury (stream of consciousness) |
| Great Gatsby narrator? | Nick Carraway (NOT Gatsby) |
| Streetcar's famous line? | "kindness of strangers" (Blanche, ending) |
| Grapes of Wrath ending? | Rose of Sharon nurses starving man |
| Cooper's Leatherstocking order? | Chronological ≠ Publication (know both!) |
| Thoreau at Walden? | 2 years (1845-47), published 1854 |