American literature: Media
Videos
Learn about the life and career of poet Phillis Wheatley.
Video: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Learn about Edgar Allan Poe's place in the Gothic literary tradition and his influence...
Video: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Ever attended a poetry reading in an arena?
Video: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
What do a frog and a poet have in common? Ask Robert Frost.
Video: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
How did Gatsby become so…great?
Video: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Images
Map of Virginia from John Smith's The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England,...
Image courtesy of Documenting the American South, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries
Title page of Anne Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America,...
From The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse, edited by John Harvard Ellis, 1867
Title page for Poor Richard's almanac for 1739, written, printed, and sold...
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Title page from Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, 1776.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Described as the “first American man of letters,” Washington Irving is best known...
Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Oliver Wendell Holmes was a physician, but he achieved his greatest fame as a humorist...
Prints and Photographs Division/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. LC-USZ61-1761)
Henry David Thoreau's cabin, illustration from the title page of an edition of his...
From Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau, 1854
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was credited with...
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-11212)
One of the most important American literary figures of the 19th century, Walt Whitman...
Feinberg-Whitman Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-USZ62-82781)
Three prominent humorists of the 19th century were (from left) Josh Billings, Mark...
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-57976)
Title page from the 1885 edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry...
Project Gutenberg (Text 76)
Novelist Henry James's great works include Daisy Miller (1879), The...
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ggbain-04703)
Journalist Ida Tarbell was one of several “muckrakers” who sharply criticized American...
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; neg. no. LC USZ 62 68572
Poet Emily Dickinson is one of American poetry's most singular and influential voices.
Amherst College Archives & Special Collections (Public Domain)
“Good fences make good neighbors.” Robert Frost crafted some of the most indelible...
Ruohomaa/Black Star
Poet, playwright, and novelist Langston Hughes was a giant of the Harlem Renaissance,...
Jack Delano—OWI/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-43605)
Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald skewered the American Dream in such works...
Public Domain
In the 1930s Zora Neale Hurston published some of her most acclaimed works, including...
Carl Van Vechten Estate/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-van-5a52142)
Novelist Ernest Hemingway with a dead Cape buffalo, on safari in Kenya, 1953.
Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
Novelist William Faulkner was known for baroque fiction that created a rich social...
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Carl Van Vechten Collection (Digital file no. 5a51970)
First-edition dust jacket of The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck;...
Viking Press/Penguin Group; Between the Covers Rare Books, Inc., Merchantville, NJ
Novelist Willa Cather's lyrical works included O Pioneers (1913) and My...
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Cover of an edition of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow published in 2013...
Vintage Publishing Press Office/The Random House Group
American author Eudora Welty, 1980.
Bernard Gotfryd Photograph Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ppmsca-12450)
Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man (1952) is considered by many critics...
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Toni Morrison was the first Black female writer in history to be honored with the...
Kathy Willens—AP/Shutterstock.com
Novelist and short-story writer Joyce Carol Oates experimented with urban naturalism,...
AP/REX/Shutterstock.com
Since her first novel, Love Medicine (1984), Louise Erdrich has won the...
Allen Brisson-Smith—The New York Times/Redux
Caribbean American writer Jamaica Kincaid's essays, stories, and novels evocatively...
MDCarchives
Beginning as a poet with a formal and imitative style, Adrienne Rich later produced...
© Bettmann/Getty Images
Poet Rita Dove in front of Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, near Charlottesville,...
Eduardo Montes-Bradley
Playwright Tennessee Williams wrote dramas that combined passionate lyricism, strong...
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka was an important figure of the Beat movement, the...
AP/REX/Shutterstock.com
Playwright David Henry Hwang achieved critical and commercial success on Broadway...
Lia Chang
In 2002 Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer...
Eric Schwabel
Literary critic Edmund Wilson was one of America's most versatile and distinguished...
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Literary critic and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. became known for his pioneering...
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
Joan Didion's collection of essays The White Album (1979) incisive social...
ruelleruelle/Alamy
Interactives
A timeline showing significant movements in American poetry.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Interactive showing a selection of U.S. poet laureates.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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