THE EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD (1775–1828)
A new era began when the United States declared its independence in 1776, and much new
writing addressed the country’s future. American poetry and fiction were largely modeled on
what was being published overseas in Great Britain, and much of what American readers
consumed also came from Great Britain.
The Federalist Papers (1787–88), by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, shaped
the political direction of the United States.
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, which he wrote during the 1770s and ’80s, told a
quintessentially American life story.
Phillis Wheatley, an African woman enslaved in Boston, wrote the first African American book,
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). Philip Freneau was another notable
poet of the era.
The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, was published in
1789.
Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, The Interesting Narrative (1789), was among the earliest
slave narratives and a forceful argument for abolition.
By the first decades of the 19th century, a truly American literature began to emerge. Though still
derived from British literary tradition, the short stories and novels published from 1800 through
the 1820s began to depict American society and explore the American landscape in an
unprecedented manner.
Washington Irving published the collection of short stories and essays The Sketch Book of
Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819–20. It included “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van
Winkle,” two of the earliest American short stories.
James Fenimore Cooper wrote novels of adventure about the frontiersman Natty Bumppo. These
novels, called the Leatherstocking Tales (1823–41), depict his experiences in the American
wilderness in both realistic and highly romanticized ways.
Popular writer in the early national period
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, first
published in 1789 in London, is the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano. The narrative is argued
to represent a variety of styles, such as a slavery narrative, travel narrative, and spiritual
narrative. The book describes Equiano's time spent in enslavement, and documents his attempts
at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual success in
gaining his own freedom and in business thereafter.
