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.