The Fall of the House of Usher

An American Renaissance?

· In the twentieth century, scholars celebrated the writers in this volume, particularly those who began publishing after 1830, as part of a literary "renaissance" comparable to that of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne. The works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman were heralded as the first really mature and significant texts produced by American authors.

· More recently, scholars and critics have begun to challenge the idea of an American Renaissance, noting that the formulation has tended to exclude popular authors, authors who lived outside of Massachusetts and New York, and the contributions of women and minority writers of the period—especially African Americans.

· They also note that studies of the American Renaissance have not paid enough attention to transatlantic ties between British and American writers or issues such as slavery, immigration, and other political and social contexts that shaped the writing of this period.

· Nonetheless, the idea of an American Renaissance remains influential and shapes the structure of anthologies such as this one.

American Literary Nationalism

· While the 1830s through 1850s is usually identified as the period when American literature came into its own, popular writers of the 1820s were hailed in the United States and England as accomplished authors of distinctively American works. The desire to produce and celebrate identifiably American works is often called "literary nationalism."

· Before and during the War of 1812, citizens of the new republic understood that their experiment in representative government was fragile and provisional. With the conclusion of this second war of independence, a new confidence emerged in the nation's democratic ideals.

· Even as authors like Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper achieved international reputations, most American writers regarded their literature as not necessarily distinct from but rather in conversation with English literary traditions.

· American writers in this period did not write uncritically patriotic texts. Instead, their works reflected anxieties about the future of a young nation grappling with divisive issues such as slavery, states' rights, national tariffs, and other matters.

· Many writers and artists in the 1820s placed a special emphasis on the importance of America's natural landscape.

The Literary Marketplace in an Expanding Nation

· By the 1820s, Americans had easy access to British literature and criticism, which, thanks to lax international copyright laws, could be republished and redistributed in the United States almost immediately after publication in London. Technological developments in printing and the expansion in railroads, canals, and other forms of transportation allowed for fast, extensive, and economical distribution of printed matter.

· Americans became increasingly interested in literature centered on urban life during this period as immigration and urbanization led to the rapid growth of cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York.

· Land acquired following a war with Mexico, through the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, transformed Americans' sense of the West, and travel literature about westward expansion became a popular genre.

· Newspaper and magazine publishing exploded between 1825 and the 1860s, providing American authors with new regional forums for their poetry, fiction, essays, travel writing, and political reportage. Writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Fanny Fern, among many others, were regularly published in periodicals.

· Women who participated in the public sphere of print raised questions about how they should balance private, domestic responsibilities with public participation. Writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia Maria Child, and Margaret Fuller debated this question and many others in popular magazines.

"Renaissance," Reform, Conflict

· Antebellum writers embraced a wide variety of reform movements, convinced that American literature and culture were not living up to their Revolutionary and democratic promises.

· Emerson was active in opposing slavery, affirming the value of temperance and supporting women's suffrage. He is better known, however, for his founding role in what many literary historians have termed the Transcendentalist movement. Emerson's Transcendental writings advocated for philosophical and literary reform.

· Transcendentalism was never a formalized movement, but its principles inspired the writing of Fuller, Thoreau, and Whitman, among others. It emphasized the creative powers of the individual mind, the regenerative value of nature, the limits of historical associations and traditions, the stultifying effects of established institutions, and the mystical glories of infancy and childhood. Like others, Transcendentalist thinkers saw science and technology as a potential solution for many of the problems facing the nation and the globe.

· Concerns about the urban poor and working-class immigrants also had an important place in antebellum reform efforts, as writers sought to prompt philanthropic interventions.

· The antebellum period saw a push for women's rights and particularly for women's right to vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented her "Declaration of Sentiments"—based on Thomas Jefferson's "Declaration of Independence"—at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. Many women writers were also active in the temperance movement to outlaw alcohol.

· While Southern writers lobbied for states' rights and defended the institution of slavery, many Northern authors addressed the paradox that a nation founded on principles of freedom and equality was implicated in the near-genocide of American Indians, the enslavement of black people, and a territorial expansion that ignored claims of sovereignty made by Mexico, the Cherokee nation, and others.

· Native American spokespersons and writers like Black Hawk and William Apess criticized white Americans' deceptive treaties, land-grabbing policies, and cruel violations of Native Americans' human rights.

· Harriet Beecher Stowe and other white writers joined African American writers like Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and William Wells Brown in their push for abolition.

· Irresolvable differences between the North and South culminated in the Civil War, a bloody conflict that cost the lives of over six hundred thousand Americans before the South surrendered in 1865.

· After the war, writers struggled to come to grips with the devastation that the war had wrought, as well as the racism, political corruption, and materialism undermining Northern efforts to institute political and social reform across the South.

The Small and Large World of American Writers, 1820–1865

· The authors included in this volume of the anthology were often in conversation with one another: William Wells Brown borrowed from Lydia Maria Child, Edgar Allan Poe inspired Walt Whitman, and Rebecca Harding Davis identified Nathaniel Hawthorne as a key influence. Their friendships and disagreements shaped the period's magazines, novels, poems, and social debates.

· Most of the writers represented in this anthology ranged beyond the borders of the United States, either through personal travel or publication. All regarded the literature of the United States as part of a larger world literature and were influenced by texts from around the globe.

· Writers in this anthology also stretched beyond their contemporary moment, engaging with the literature and history of a wide range of time periods.

· Many antebellum writers sought to create American literary traditions by looking back to earlier colonial texts and trying to create a sense of continuity with and from them.

· Many antebellum authors defy periodization. They produced highly regarded work after the Civil War, and some who are today considered "canonical" were not widely appreciated in their own time. Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Emily Dickinson all found their most enthusiastic readers in the twentieth century.