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‘The Americans are a brave, industrious, and acute people; but they have hitherto given no indications of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their morality or character [….] Their Franklins and Washingtons, and all the other sages and heroes of their revolution, were born and bred subjects of the King of England [….] And, since the period of their separation, a far greater proportion of their statesmen and artists and political writers have been foreigners, than ever occurred before in the history of any civilized and educated people. During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the Sciences, for the Arts, for Literature [….] In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?’

(Sydney Smith. ‘Review of Adam Seybert’s Statistical Annals of the United States of America.’ Edinburgh Review. 33:65 (January, 1820): 69-80, 78-9.)

"With the emergence of new forms (and sites) of national sentiment in the wake of the French Revolution and its aftermath, literary culture [...] was increasingly understood as an emanation of local or national place. This led to a new sense of literary history as national history." - Ina Ferris

Copyright

Waverley, 1814

North American Review, 1833:

“When Waverley appeared, men beheld it with as much perplexity, as the out-break of a revolution; the more prudent held their peace, and waited to see what might come of it; the critics were in sad straits, having nothing wherewithal to measure it . . . but the public, without asking their opinion, gave decisive judgment in its favor”

"The novel entered the nineteenth century as an undeniably low genre, but one in flux. Relegated to the subliterary margins of the literary sphere, it continued to be dismissed in the reviews as a commercial genre of popular entertainment directed mainly at new, inexperienced readers" - Ina Ferris

Harriet Beecher Stowe:

"In regard to Scott's novels, it will be remembered that, at the time they came out, novel writing stood at so low an ebb that most serious-minded people regarded novel reading as an evil. Such a thing as a novel was not to be found in our house.

"Great was the light and joy, therefore, when father spoke ex cathedra, "[...] you may read Scott's novels. I have always disapproved of novels as trash, but in these is real genius and real culture, and you may read them." And we did read them; for in one summer we went through Ivanhoe seven times, and were both of us able to recite many of its scenes, from beginning to end, verbatim.

György Lukács, The Historical Novel, 1937:

"It was the French Revolution, the revolutionary wars and the rise and fall of Napoleon, which for the first time made history a mass experience [...] Hence the concrete possibilities for men to comprehend their own existence as something historically conditioned, for them to see in history something which deeply affects their daily lives and immediately concerns them"

1815

17 years

Who reads an American book?

Washington Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon

‘We are now tempted to notice it as a very remarkable publication, – and to predict that it will form an era in the literature of the nation to which it belongs. It is the work of an American, entirely bred and trained in that country [….] It is the first American work, we rather think, of any description, but certainly the first purely literary production, to which we could give this praise.’

(‘Review of The Sketch Book, by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.’ Edinburgh Review. 34:67 (August, 1820), 160-76, 160.)

Byron, on the Sketch Book: “I know it by heart […] there is not a passage that I cannot refer to immediately […] His writings are my delight”

"White man, beware! The mighty spirits of the Wampanoag race are hovering o’er your heads. They stretch out their shadowy arms and shriek for vengeance. They shall have it! The warwhoop shall fright ye from your dreams at night. The red hatchet shall gleam in the horrid glare of your burning dwellings. From the east to the west, in the north and in the south, shall the loud cry of vengeance burst till the lands ye have stolen groan under your feet no more."

1820

James Fenimore Cooper, Precaution (1820)

James Fenimore Cooper, The Spy (1821)

Walter Scott, The Pirate (1822)

1823: James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers

1826: Last of the Mohicans

"Contemporary fiction was perceived across the critical spectrum as a female realm, a genre aimed at female readers and dominated by women writers (no matter the actual make-up of authorship and readership) [...] The critical stage was thus set for the entry of a 'manly' writer like Scott, whose historical novel [...] decisively repositioned the novel in the hierarchy of genres." - Ina Ferris.

1822: Catharine Maria Sedgwick, A New England Tale

1824: Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Redwood

1827: Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Hope Leslie

Philip treated his prisoners with a great deal more Christian like spirit than the Pilgrims did; even Mrs. Rowlandson, although speaking with bitterness sometimes of the Indians, yet in her journal she speaks not a word against him.

- William Apess, "Eulogy on King Philip"

1837

The United States Magazine and Democratic Review:

‘We have no national literature. We depend almost wholly on Europe, and particularly England, to think and write for us, or at least to furnish materials and models after which we shall mould our own humble attempts. [….] Our mind is enslaved to the past and present literature of England [….] But we should not follow in her wake; a radiant path invites us forward in another direction. [….] There is an immense field open to us, if we would but enter it boldly and cultivate it as our own.’

Richard Teichgraeber, Sublime Thoughts / Penny Wisdom: Situating Emerson and Thoreau in the American Market:

“During the 1820s 128 American novels were published, almost forty more than had been published in the previous 50 years, and five times the number published during the previous decade—and yet more than double that number appeared in the 1830s; and the total more than doubles again in the 1840s, to nearly eight hundred. ”

James Fenimore Cooper, 1821:

‘The task of making American Manners and American scenes interesting to an American reader is an arduous one’

Philip Deloria: "Vanishing Indian"

Washington Irving, Sketch Book, 1820

Thomas Cole, Scene from Last of the Mohicans: Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund, 1827

Edwin Forrest as Metamora

Indian Removal Act, 1830

Joseph Jefferson III, Rip Van Winkle

‘I visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification, for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine;—no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

But Europe held forth the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly-cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise: Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement—to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity—to loiter about the ruined castle—to meditate on the falling tower—to escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.’

Irving, Sketch Book, 1820

Maria Edgeworth

William Channing, North American Review, 1815

Scott, to Irving

Jane Austen

The reading of Americans…is English; there being few native writers, and but a small number of these who possess the respect of even their own country men. Our novels and poetry [...] meet with an immediate reprint, and constitute practically the entire American library […] Notwithstanding this voluntary national dependence, there are, perhaps, no people, not even excepting the French, who are so vain as the Americans.

Henry Bradshaw Fearon, Sketches of America. A Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles Through the Eastern and Western States of America, (London, 1818), 365-68.

Irving, on Scott

Wayne Franklin

Writing the Nation

It was a son of nature, with nature’s talents alone. And who did he have to contend with? With all the combined arts of cultivated talents of the Old and New World. It was like putting one talent against a thousand. And yet Philip, with that, accomplished more than all of them. Yea, he outdid the well disciplined forces of Greece, under the command of Philip, the Grecian emperor; for he never was enabled to lay such plans of allying the tribes of the earth together, as Philip of Mount Hope did. And even Napoleon patterned after him, in collecting his forces and surprising the enemy. Washington, too, pursued many of his plans in attacking the enemy and thereby enabled him to defeat his antagonists and conquer them. What, then, shall we say? Shall we not do right to say that Philip, with his one talent, outstrips them all with their ten thousand?

- William Apess, "Eulogy on King Philip"

George Dekker, American Historical Romance

‘Our children’s books are English; […] our stage is supplied from England; […] Byron, Campbell, Southey, Scott, are as familiar to us as their own countrymen; […] we receive the first sheets of the new novel before the last one is thrown off at Edinburgh; […] we reprint every English work of merit […]; and […] the English version of the Scriptures is the great source whence the majority of Americans imbibe their English language.’

Edward Everett, North American Review, 1821.

Catharine Maria Sedgwick

Washington Irving

William Apess

James Fenimore Cooper

Jonathan Arac

"Philip, the greatest man that ever lived upon the American shores."

- William Apess, "Eulogy on King Philip"

G. Harrison Orians

W. H. Gardiner, North American Review, 1822

Edgar Allan Poe, 1836

John Neal, Blackwood's Magazine, 1824

‘There are several reasons why an American, who writes a novel, should choose his own country for the scene of his story – and there are more against it. To begin with the -- pros -- the ground is untrodden, and will have all the charms of novelty […] The very singularity of the circumstance, gives the book some small chance of being noticed abroad […] But there is still another class of critics, whose smiles we most covet, and whose frowns we most expect to encounter […] The truth is, that a woman is a bundle of sensibilities, and these are qualities which exist chiefly in the fancy. Certain moated castles, draw-bridges, and kind a of classic nature, are much required by these imaginative beings […] We would not be understood as throwing the gauntlet to our fair countrywomen, by whose opinions it is that we expect to stand or fall; we only mean to say, that if we have got no lords and castles in the book, it is because there are none in the country.’

James Fenimore Cooper, Preface to The Spy (1821)

Walter Scott, Henry Raeburn, 1822

Why pause?--like Irving, haste away,

To England your addresses pay;

And England will reward you well,

Of British feats, and British arms,

The maids of honor, and their charms.

Dear bard, I pray you, take the hint,

In England what you write and print,

Republished here in shop, or stall,

Will perfectly enchant us all

Philip Freneau, "To a New England Poet" (1823)

Why stay in such a tasteless land,

Where all must on a level stand,

(Excepting people, at their ease,

Who choose the level where they please:)

See Irving gone to Britain's court

To people of another sort,

He will return, with wealth and fame,

While Yankees hardly know your name.

Lo! he has kissed a Monarch's--hand!

Before a prince I see him stand,

And with the glittering nobles mix,

Forgetting times of seventy-six

[...]

W. H. Gardiner, North American Review, 1822

G. Harrison Orians

History

Nature

Literature

Nationhood

Race

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