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American literature is literature written or produced in the United States and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature but also includes literature produced in languages other than English .
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 ...
Religious perspectives became prominent in colonial American literature during the later 17th-century and into the 18th-century, and were mostly found in Puritan writings and publications, [93] [g] often resulting in charges of libel and sedition levied by the British Crown.
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.
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.
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.
The English-literature chapters begin with Old English poetry and end with the late Victorian era. Coverage of American literature ranges from colonial and revolutionary periods through the early twentieth century. A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller were the joint editors-in-chief of the 14 volumes (with an additional index volume) on English ...