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The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature but also includes literature produced in languages other than English. [ 1 ] The American Revolutionary Period (1775–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin , Alexander Hamilton , Thomas Paine , and Thomas Jefferson .
A distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was Phillis Wheatley, a slave whose book "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," was published in 1773. She was one of the best-known poets of her day, at least in the colonies, and her poems were typical of New England culture at the time, meditating on religious and classical ...
The majority of the books and pamphlets of the period bore a Boston imprint, making eastern Massachusetts the literary and typographic center of colonial America. [25] Colonial newspapers played an active role during the Christian revivalist controversy that occurred in the early 1740s.
Critic and author John Neal was unique in this early period for demanding and experimenting with natural diction and "ungenteel and sometimes bluntly profane" [11] American colloquialism. [12] The predominant early rhetoric is exemplified by James Fenimore Cooper , who in 1828 claimed that "the literature of England and that of America must be ...
New England's rich literary history begins with the oral tradition of Native American tribes. During the colonial period, Stephen Daye set up the first British-American printing press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, in 1640, published the Bay Psalm Book as the first book printed in British North America.
Included in this category are novels set in the geographical area which later became the United States, from earliest years of exploration to the American Revolutionary War. Novels which begin before the war but are mainly in the Revolutionary War period should be listed in the Category: American Revolutionary War novels.
The New England Primer was the first reading primer designed for the American colonies. It became the most successful educational textbook published in 17th-century colonial United States and it became the foundation of most schooling before the 1790s. In the 17th century, the schoolbooks in use had been Bibles brought over from England.
Southern United States literature consists of American literature written about the Southern United States or by writers from the region. Literature written about the American South first began during the colonial era, and developed significantly during and after the period of slavery in the United States.