istoryworld
American Literature timeline
Iste quibusdam in au
Samuel Sewall begins a diary of daily life in Boston, Massachusetts, that will span a period of more than fifty years
Boston merchant Samuel Sewall publishes The Selling of Joseph, a very early anti-slavery tract
16-year-old Benjamin Franklin contributes the 'Dogood Papers', essays on moral topics, to a Boston journal, The New England Courant
In Common Sense, an anonymous pamphlet, English immigrant Thomas Paine is the first to argue that the American colonies should be independent
Francis Hopkinson's popular ballad The Battle of the Kegs describes an ingenious American threat to the British navy
US poet Philip Freneau describes in The British Prison Ship the horrors of his experiences as a prisoner
US lexicographer Noah Webster publishes a Spelling Book for American children that eventually will sell more than 60 million copies
US author Philip Freneau publishes his first collection of poems, dating back to 1771
The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, a slave captured as a child in Africa, becomes a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic
US painter and author William Dunlap has great success with his comedy The Father; or, American Shandyism
US author Joel Barlow publishes his mock-heroic poem The Hasty Pudding, inspired by a dish eaten in 1793 in France
US author Charles Brockden Brown publishes Wieland, the first of four novels setting Gothic romance in an American context
The Library of Congress, the US national library in all but name, is founded in Washington
Washington Irving uses the fictional Dutch scholar Diedrich Knickerbocker as the supposed author of his comic History of New York
US lawyer Francis Scott Key writes The Star-Spangled Banner after seeing the British bombard Fort McHenry
US poet William Cullen Bryant publishes Thanatopsis, written seven years previously at the age of 16
Washington Irving tells the story of the long sleep of Rip Van Winkle in his Sketch Book
7-year-old Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has a poem published in a newspaper in his home town of Portland, Maine
The Spy, a romance set in the American Revolution, establishes the reputation of US author James Fenimore Cooper
The spoken language of the Cherokee Indians is captured in written form – an achievement traditionally attributed to Sequoyah
James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers introduces Natty Bumppo, frontiersman known for his 'leather stockings'
An American poem, A Visit from St Nicholas, describes in every detail the modern Santa Claus
In James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, Natty Bumppo sides with a Mohican chief
Connecticut lexicographer Noah Webster publishes the definitive 2-volume scholarly edition of his American Dictionary of the English Language
