US literature Chronology

Drama and Theater
Robert Taylor Conrad: Jack Cade, the Captain of the Commons. Sometimes titled Aylmere, Conrad's most important play gains him literary prominence in Philadelphia. The blank-verse tragedy concerns the leader of the 1450 rebellion against the government of King Henry VI. The opening performance is delayed because of the leading actor's drunkenness, but it later would star Edwin Forrest and become very successful.
Edgar Allan Poe: Politian: A Tragedy. Three scenes of Poe's unfinished blank-verse drama based on the Beauchamp-Sharp murder case known as the Kentucky Tragedy but set in sixteenth-century Rome are published in the Southern Literary Messenger. It would be published in its entirety in 1923.
Fiction
Jacob Abbott: The Little Scholar Learning to Talk and Rollo Learning to Read. Abbott, an educator and minister, publishes the first in his Rollo series about a New England farm boy whose experiences at home and abroad provide lessons in self-improvement, prudence, and honesty for young readers.
Robert Montgomery Bird: The Hawks of Hawks Hollow. A novel set in the years following the Revolutionary War. The romance recounts the fate of a Pennsylvania family torn apart by the conflict between American patriots and Tories. The well-received novel represents a shift in Bird's writing from romances of great historical periods to a domestic novel of contemporary times. Bird also publishes The Infidel; or, The Fall of Mexico, a sequel to Calavar (1834). The work is acclaimed by Poe in the Southern Literary Messenger.
Theodore Sedgwick Fay: Norman Leslie: A Tale of the Present Times. The story of a sensational New York murder case in which Leslie is tried and acquitted for the murder of a young girl who disappears and later resurfaces in Paris. Fay's best work, it receives immediate popular and critical praise. However, it is also remembered for Edgar Allan Poe's comment that it is "the most inestimable piece of balderdash with which the common sense of the good people of America were ever so openly or so villainously insulted."
James Hall: Tales of the Border. Hall's third collection of short stories in three years contains seven tales, including "The Pioneer," a story of a man who hates the Indians for killing his family and abducting his sister, who, he later realizes, is living happily in the Indian village.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: "The Ambitious Guest." First published in The Token and to be included in Twice-Told Tales (1837), Hawthorne's allegorical story recalls the confessions of the inhabitants of an isolated cottage in New Hampshire's White Mountains before a landslide hits. Hawthorne also publishes "Young Goodman Brown," a psychological allegory that would become one of Hawthorne's most critically acclaimed stories. Goodman Brown, a young Puritan in Salem, Massachusetts, leaves his wife and discovers a witches' sabbath in the forest, where he finds all of the prominent moral leaders of his community, as well as his wife, Faith. He realizes evil exists inherently in all humanity but can no longer see the good and spends the rest of his life in gloom and isolation. The story is first published in New England Magazine and would be included in Mosses from an Old Manse (1846).
Henry William Herbert (1807-1858): The Brothers: A Tale of the Fronde. A popular historical romance concerning an English cavalier in France who witnesses a duel between two brothers and marries the woman over whom they were fighting. A review in the New England Magazine urges readers "to procure The Brothers, at once, and thus secure a valuable addition to their stores of fiction." Herbert immigrated to America from England in 1831, helped found the American Monthly Magazine, and, under the name "Frank Forrester," became the first sports writer in the United States.
John Pendleton Kennedy: Horse-Shoe Robinson. This popular romance set during the American Revolution concerns the daughter of a Tory who secretly marries a patriot. The story is notable for its title protagonist, a crude but resourceful blacksmith, and also for its portrayal of the Battle of King's Mountain.
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790-1870): Georgia Scenes, Characters, Incidents, &c. in the First Half Century of the Republic. A popular collection of sketches on the customs, manner, wit, and dialect of the common frontier people. Attributed to "A Native Georgian," the sketches are based on Longstreet's experiences as a circuit judge, and they provide the first example of Southwestern humor and represent the first alternative to the plantation story in Southern literature.
Joseph Clay Neal (1807-1847): "Peter Brush, the Great Used Up." A sketch about a man who fails to win a political office and laments on a city curb. The most renowned sketch written by the Philadelphia journalist, who is remembered for his urban Northeast humor, it is published in the Gentleman's Vade Mecum and would be often reprinted without credit to the author.
Edgar Allan Poe: "Berenice." Poe's first story to be published in the Southern Literary Messenger after John Pendleton Kennedy had introduced him to the editor, T. W. White. In the story Egaeus is captivated by the white teeth of his beloved cousin Berenice, and when she falls into a trance after an epileptic seizure, he believes she has died and removes her teeth. Although White feared the story too grotesque for the magazine, Poe had convinced him that articles that are "ludicrous heightened into the grotesque" sell magazines. This initial publication would lead to Poe's numerous story contributions, critical reviews, and editorship of the Messenger. Poe also publishes "Morella" in the Southern Literary Messenger; it would be later included in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Poe's story, regarded as a preliminary workup of his later work "Ligeia," concerns a dying woman who vows to return to life to punish her unloving husband. Poe's tale "The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaal," describing a trip to the moon, is published in the Southern Literary Messenger and is one of the earliest examples of American science fiction.
Catharine Maria Sedgwick: The Linwoods; or, "Sixty Years Since" in America. A critically acclaimed historical romance concerning social life in New York City during the last two years of the American Revolution and the conflict between a Loyalist father and rebel son.
William Gilmore Simms: The Partisan, a Tale of the Revolution. The first of Simms's Revolutionary romances concerns a Whig officer, Major Singleton, who leads a partisan effort against the British and Loyalists. The work is praised for its beauty of description by Edgar Allan Poe in the Southern Literary Messenger. It is notable for the character Captain Porgy, whom many consider the best comic character in American Romantic fiction, but whom Poe finds "an insufferable bore." The other books in his Revolutionary trilogy are Mellichampe, a Legend of the Santee (1836) and Katharine Walton; or, The Rebel of Dorchester (1851). Simms also publishes The Yemassee. The best known of his series of historical novels that he called "border romances," which deal with Southern frontier life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, concerns the warfare between the Carolina colonists and the Yamasee Indians. It receives praise from the American Monthly Magazine for its realistic and sympathetic depictions of Native Americans.
William Leete Stone: The Mysterious Bridal and Other Tales. Stone's collection of gothic tales set in colonial New England invites comparisons with Hawthorne and displays his characteristic use of local color, history, and legend.
Frederick William Thomas: Clinton Bradshaw; or, The Adventures of a Lawyer. Thomas's first novel is an Americanization of the British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Pelham (1828), about upper-class life mixed with crime scenes. It features a courtroom scene that would set a standard for later fictional depictions.
Daniel Pierce Thompson (1795-1868): "May Martin." The Vermont lawyer and politician achieves his first literary success with this Vermont story, based on a local legend; it wins a prize from the New-England Galaxy for best original tale. More than fifty editions of the story would subsequently appear.
Literary Criticism and Scholarship
Joseph Emerson Worcester: A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed. Noah Webster's accusation of plagiarism against his lexicographer rival prompts the so-called War of Dictionaries and Worcester's self-defense in this pamphlet.
Nonfiction
William Apes: Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Law of Massachusetts. Apes presents the Indian viewpoint concerning the Mashpee Revolt of 1833, in which inhabitants of the last surviving Indian town in Massachusetts had protested governmental control and the Indians' lack of autonomy. The work has been described as the first successful Indian rights protest in U.S. history.
Henry Charles Carey (1793-1879): Essay on the Rate of Wages. The author's first published work argues for the laissez-faire school of economics, which embraces the wage-fund theory. Carey opposes the theories of English economist David Ricardo and espouses free trade. He is considered the founder of the American school of economics.
Lydia Maria Child: A History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations. The final two volumes of Child's Ladies' Family Library provide biographical sketches of important women. The work became a source for feminists such as Sarah Grimké, and the popularity of the history, published in twenty editions in seven years, demonstrates the country's increasing interest in feminism.
Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-1884): A Winter in the West. A collection of letters detailing Hoffman's horseback trip west to Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis. First printed in the American Monthly Magazine, the letters are popular for their descriptions of America's westward expansion.
Washington Irving: A Tour on the Prairies. The first volume of The Crayon Miscellany, which comprises three works published under the pseudonym "Geoffrey Crayon." A Tour is an account of Irving's travels westward from Arkansas into what is now Oklahoma and depicts his frontier adventures, including buffalo hunting, in a romantic reflection of western life.
Frances Anne Kemble (1809-1893): Journal. The English actress who had toured America in 1832 records her observations of American life. She would later marry a Georgia plantation owner; her Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation, with critique of slavery, would be published in 1863 to influence British opinion against the Confederacy.
Susan Paul (1809-1841): Memoir of James Jackson, the Attentive and Obedient Scholar.... The first biography by an African American published in the United States. Unnoticed until its rediscovery in 2000, the biography of a pious black child prodigy by his Boston teacher provides significant information about early African American education, reading, and family life in the North.
James Kirke Paulding: A Life of Washington. Considered the standard biography of Washington until Irving's biography of the first president (1855). Poe's review exclaims, "There is no better literary manner than the manner of Mr. Paulding."
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894): Record of a School, Exemplifying the General Principles of Spiritual Culture. A record of the methods of discipline and inductive lessons at Amos Bronson Alcott's experimental Temple School, where Peabody served as an assistant from 1834 to 1836. The work advances the reputation of the school and is an important document in Transcendentalism and a record of Alcott's educational theories. Hawthorne's sister-in-law, whose Boston bookshop became a favorite meeting place for the Transcendentalist Club, Peabody opened the first kindergarten in the United States in 1860.
Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860): A Manual of Drawing and Writing for the Use of Schools and Families. Based on Peale's belief that drawing should and could be taught to everyone, this work presents a system of instruction. His most popular work, it would go through four editions by 1866 and stay in print for thirty years.
Poetry
Joseph Rodman Drake: The Culprit Fay and Other Poems. This posthumous selection of Drake's works (he died in 1820) includes his most popular pieces, the title poem and "The American Flag," long a popular recitation.
William Davis Gallagher (1808-1894): Erato. Three warmly received collections of verse, two published in 1835 and the last in 1837, that are noteworthy for their descriptions of life and nature in the West. Ralph Leslie Rusk, author of The Literature of the Middle Western Frontier (1925), said the collections hold "almost, if not quite, the best verses written on the frontier."
Publications and Events
William Davis Gallagher (1808-1894)The New York Herald. Founded by James Gordon Bennett (1795-1872) and edited after 1872 by the younger James Gordon Bennett (1841-1918), this daily featured the writings of authors such as Mark Twain and Richard Harding Davis, and it organized and financed explorer-reporter Sir Henry Stanley's expedition to Africa (1869-1872) to find the missionary David Livingstone. It later merged with the New York Sun (1920) and the New-York Tribune (1924) to create the New York Herald Tribune, a Republican daily noted for its news coverage and columnists, such as Walter Lippmann. Circulation and labor problems forced closure of the newspaper in 1966.
William Davis Gallagher (1808-1894)The Southern Literary Journal and Monthly Magazine. A Charleston-based review devoted to chronicling Southern life and supporting Southern culture and slavery. Founded and edited by Daniel K. Whitaker, its primary contributor is William Gilmore Simms, whose most notable article is "American Criticism and Critics."
William Davis Gallagher (1808-1894)The Western Messenger. A monthly magazine, committed to delivering the culture and literature of the American West to the East and bringing New England Transcendentalist topics to the West, begins under the auspices of the Unitarian church. Edited by W. H. Channing, J. F. Clarke, and J. H. Perkins, the magazine featured work by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Jones Very, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and Francis Parkman.

Tools

John Ireland Howe, using a greatly improved version of his 1832 pin-making machine, founds the Howe Manufacturing Company, a successful manufacturer of straight pins in an age when they are used not only for clothing, but also for most of the purposes for which paper clips are used today. See also 1832 Tools.
Samuel Colt [b. Hartford, Connecticut, July 19, 1814, d. Hartford, January 10, 1862] patents his revolver with a rotating breech. The breech turns in such a way that each time the trigger is pulled, a new bullet is placed in front of the barrel. Colt's invention was inspired by his observation of a helmsman turning a wheel that had a clutch that could lock it in several positions. See also 1812 Tools.

Communication

Communication
Joseph Henry develops the basic principles of the modern telegraph, put into more practical form 11 years later by Samuel Finley Breese Morse [b. Charlestown, Massachusetts, April 27, 1791, d. New York City, April 2, 1872], such as the electric relay and the use of Earth as a ground. The electrical relay enables a current to travel long distances from its origin. See also 1833 Communication; 1836 Communication.


During the summer William Fox Talbot begins to use his new invention of photography to take experimental pictures of his home at Lacock Abbey. See also 1834 Communication.

Agriculture

Washington Irving describes honeybees in A Tour of the Prairies: "It is surprising in what countless swarms the bees have overspread the Far West within a moderate number of years. The Indians consider them the harbinger of the white man, as the buffalo is of the red man; and say that, in proportion as the bee advances, the Indian and the buffalo retire . . . I am told that the wild bee is seldom to be met with at any great distance from the frontier

Enviroment

A fire in New York's Fulton, Nassau, and Ann streets August 12 kills five people and destroys 35 houses; a much worse fire breaks out December 16, and although organized bucket brigades help fire chief James "Handsome Jim" Gulick and his men keep the flames from spreading north of Wall Street, the fire rages out of control in the commercial, pier, and warehouse area of Wall, Broad, and South streets, destroying a marble statue of Alexander Hamilton. Turpentine inside warehouses along the East River is ignited, the river itself becomes a blazing sea, and debris is blown over Brooklyn. Manhattan's Dutch Riverside Church catches fire and burns down while an organist inside plays a funeral dirge until he is consumed by the flames. Mobs come down from the Five Points to loot, and a man caught setting fire to a house at the corner of Stone and Broad streets is lynched from a tree. Rioters fight over French hats, Manchester woollens, and baskets of champagne, but one merchant saves his goods by stopping the driver of a horse cart and paying the man $500 to haul away the contents of his store. The conflagration is visible for miles, volunteer firefighters arrive by ferry from Brooklyn, Newark, and Jersey City. Some 400 come from Philadelphia. The mercury plunges to 17°, pumping engines freeze, water freezes in the leather hoses, and some of the 1,900 firemen, although covered with ice, are singed while others nearby suffer frostbite. The fire continues well into the next day, destroying the Merchants' Exchange, and explosives are finally used to create fire stops. The fire levels 13 acres in the heart of the city's commercial and financial district, destroys 674 buildings, many of them in Hanover and Pearl Streets, causes damage estimated at between $20 million and $40 million (see insurance companies, 1836), and leaves many hundreds of people homeless. Lack of water pressure with which to fight the flames is blamed for much of the damage (see Croton aqueduct, 1837).

Theatre, Film

P. T. Barnum begins a notable career in U.S. show business. Connecticut-born promoter Phineas Taylor Barnum, 25, paid $1,000 last year to purchase a slave woman who is alleged to have been George Washington's childhood nurse and to be more than 160 years old. The fledgling showman takes in $1,500 per week by exhibiting the woman throughout New York and New England. Joice Heth will be proved to be no older than 80 when she dies next year, but Barnum will continue the well-publicized tours that he has begun with a small company of carnival attractions (see Siamese Twins, 1829; Tom Thumb, 1842).

Poetry

The Rural Muse by John Clare, now 43, who 15 years ago married the daughter of a neighboring farmer and has himself been farming in order to support his wife and seven children.


Juvenile: Fairy Tales (Eventyr) by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, 30, whose novel The Improvisators also appears and enjoys such success that Andersen is encouraged to pursue a career as novelist and dramatist and neglect the fairy tales that will make him famous. Included in his first volume are "The Tinderbox" ("Fyrtojet"), "The Princess on the Pea" ("Princessen paa Aerten"), "Little Claus and Big Claus" ("Lille Claus og store Claus"), and "Little Ida's Flowers" ("Den lille Idas Blomster"), which will be followed in time by "The Ugly Duckling," "The Fir Tree," "The Red Shoes," "The Swineherd," "The Snow Queen" ("Snedronningen"), and "The Emperor's New Clothes" ("Kejserens nye Kloeder").

Literature

Nonfiction: Democracy in America (De la Démocratie en Amerique) by French political scientist Alexis (Charles-Henri-Maurice Clérel) de Tocqueville, 35, who traveled for 9 months in 1831 with his friend Gustave de Beaumont through eastern Canada and various areas of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, and New Orleans on a commission to study the U.S penitentiary system (first volume of four; the fourth will be published in 1840). "Nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions . . . All classes meet continually and no haughtiness at all results from the differences in social position. Everyone shakes hands," writes de Tocqueville. But he foresees the rise of certain forces that will eventually undermine the principle of economic equality, and while the American passion for equality "tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great . . . there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." Tyranny of the majority is a possible hazard of democracy, de Tocqueville warns, but he notes that law, religion, and the press provide bulwarks against democratic despotism, as he will elaborate in his later volumes; The Vindication of the English Constitution by Benjamin Disraeli.

Fiction: "Berenice" by Edgar Allan Poe in the March issue of The Southern Literary Messenger; The Yemassee by Charleston, South Carolina-born novelist William Gilmore Simms, 29, whose story about Native Americans will make him widely known. Simms returns from New York to Charleston, where his first wife died 3 years ago and where he will soon marry the daughter of a rich planter.

Communications, Media

The New York Herald begins publication May 6 under the direction of Scots-born journalist James Gordon Bennett, 40, as a rival to the Morning Sun. Bennett has started the 1¢ newspaper with $500, two wooden chairs, and an old dry goods box in a cellar office; he announces in his first issue that the Herald will be a "saucy" paper with "good taste, brevity, variety, point, and piquancy" intended for "the great masses of the community." His four-column pages include the first financial page (Bennett covers Wall Street himself) but will also be the first to give full coverage to murder trials, including questions and answers from court proceedings. Pandering to the lowest tastes, giving emphasis to crime, scandal, and sex, the Herald quickly gains a wide circulation.

The Toledo Blade begins publication December 19 at the northwestern Ohio city that will be incorporated in 1837, taking its name from the Spanish city famous in medieval times for its steel-bladed swords. The four-page weekly will become a family-owned daily with readers in 14 counties in Ohio and southeast Michigan (see Nonfiction [Petroleum V. Nasby], 1864).

Science

North American Gramineae and Cyperaceae by upstate New York botanist Asa Gray, 24, describes 200 species and establishes the reputation of its author.

Technology

Inventor and cotton goods manufacturer Samuel Slater dies at Webster, Massachusetts, April 21 at age 66, leaving an estate valued at $9 million. He will be remembered as the founder of the American cotton industry.

Transportation

The United States has 1,098 miles of railroad in operation by year's end.

Commerce

Paterson, New Jersey, children employed at the local silk mills go on strike July 3 to demand an 11-hour day and 6-day work week.

Massachusetts-born Baltimore merchant George Peabody, 40, visits London on business and negotiates a loan of $8 million for Maryland, saving the state from bankruptcy. He refuses a commission and receives a vote of thanks from the state legislature, but Peabody will settle permanently at London in 1837, becoming a dealer in foreign exchange and U.S. securities in competition with Baring Brothers and the Rothschilds (see Great Exhibition, 1851).

Insurance company president Eliphalet Terry of The Hartford travels 100 miles by sleigh to New York in December and personally settles fire-insurance claims against his 25-year-old company. He pledges his own fortune to guarantee payment to all policyholders, building a reputation that will serve the company in good stead. The Hartford will expand into other financial services and survive into the 21st century as the oldest continuously operated U.S. insurance company (see 1861).

Human Rights, Social Justice

A Utica, New York, mob breaks up an antislavery meeting. Local temperance worker and philanthropist Gerrit Smith, 38, is among those who witness the event and he becomes an abolitionist.


A new Seminole War between natives and whites in Florida Territory begins following the arrest and imprisonment of Osceola, 31, who has thrust his knife through the 1832 treaty that ceded Seminole lands to the United States. Osecola escapes, he and his braves kill a chief who signed the 1832 treaty, killing also the U.S. Indian agent at Fort King, and they begin 2 years of guerrilla activities against U.S. forces under General Thomas S. Jesup, 46, while Seminole women and children remain hidden deep in the Everglades. The Seminole and their black slaves massacre a 103-man U.S. Army force under Major Francis L. Dade December 28 (see 1837).
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Exploration, Colonization

St. Petersburg, Florida, has its beginnings in a settlement at Old Tampa Bay founded by French immigrant Odet Philippe, who was once a surgeon for Napoleon.

Political Events

Mexico and Texas
Mexican vice president Valentin Gómez Farías, 54, flees to New Orleans following President Santa Anna's return to the capital (see 1833). Gómez Farías has offended powerful interests by obtaining legislation that has rescinded the compulsory payment of tithes, ended Church control of education, permitted members of religious orders to rescind their vows, reformed the customhouses, eliminated the tobacco monopoly, reduced the number of generals, terminated the military's special privileges, and created a civilian militia (see constitution, 1857).Texas settlers at Gonzales refuse in September to return a cannon taken from San Antonio de Bexar, resisting an order from Domingo de Ugartechea; he sends 100 dragoons under the command of Lieutenent Francisco Castaneda to enforce his order September 29, Tennessee-born Colonel John Henry Moore, 32, tells Castaneda, "Come and take it." Castaneda brings in reinforcements, the Texans prevail in the Battle of Gonzales October 2, the Mexicans take to their heels, and Stephen F. Austin organizes the First Army of Texas Volunteers, announcing that Texans will have to make war with Mexico to gain freedom (see 1831). George Fisher and Jalapa-born military officer José Antonio Mexia, 35, begin organizing a movement at New Orleans to attack Tampico, and they instigate a revolt in Mexico's eastern states (Mexia has an English-born wife). The Battle of Concepcion October 28 ends in victory for 90 Texans over a force of 450 Mexicans. Mexia leaves New Orleans November 6 with an army aboard the schooner Mary Jane. She runs aground near Tampico 8 days later, and when Mexia attacks Tampico November 15 he encounters stiff resistance from a Mexican force commanded by Gregorio Gómez, who takes 31 prisoners and forces him to retreat. Mexia arrives with the survivors of his failed expedition at the Brazos River December 3, and 28 of the 31 prisoners taken November 15 are executed December 14 by order of President Santa Anna, who receives a declaration from the Mexican Congress December 30 that all armed foreigners are to be treated as pirates and shot (see Alamo, 1836).

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall dies at Philadelphia July 6 at age 79 after 34 years as the nation's highest magistrate. His successor is Maryland-born jurist Roger Brooke Taney, now 58, who will be confirmed by the Senate in March of next year and serve until his death in 1864 (he has been attorney general in the Jackson administration), reversing the trend toward strong centralization of governmental power and establishing a narrow construction of corporate charters granted by the states.
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