Colonial Period to 1700

Native American Oral Literatures

Native American Oral Narrative
Native American Oral Poetry

New Spain

New Spain Misc.
The Jesuit Relations
Christopher Columbus (1451 - 1506)
Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca (1490? - 1556?)
Fray Marcos de Niza (1495? - 1542)
Pedro de Casteñeda (1510? - 1570?)
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519 - 1574)
Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá (1555 - 1620)
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 - 1695)
Don Antonio de Otermín (1680?)
Don Diego de Vargas (1704)

New France

René Goulaine de Laudonnière (1562 - 1582)
Samuel de Champlain (1570? - 1635)

Chesapeake

Edward Maria Wingfield
Thomas Harriot (1560 - 1621)
John Smith (1580 - 1631)
Richard Frethorne (1623?)
James Revel (1640?)
Nathaniel Bacon (1647 - 1676)

New England

Thomas Morton (1579? - 1647?)
John Winthrop (1588 - 1649)
William Bradford (1590 - 1657)
Roger Williams (1603? - 1683)
Thomas Shepard (1605 - 1649)
Anne Bradstreet (1612? - 1672)
Michael Wigglesworth (1631 - 1705)
Mary White Rowlandson (1637? - 1711)
The Bay Psalm Book (1640 - )
Edward Taylor (1642? - 1749)
Samuel Sewall (1652 - 1730)
Cotton Mather (1663 - 1728)
John Williams (1664 - 1729)

A Sheaf of Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Poetry

Thomas Tillam (1676)
John Wilson (1588 - 1667)
John Josselyn (1610 - 1692?)
John Saffin (1626 - 1710)
George Alsop (1636? - 1673?)
Sarah Whipple Goodhue (1641 - 1681)
Benjamin Tompson (1642 - 1714)
Richard Steere (1643? - 1721)
Anna Tompson Hayden (1648 - 1720)
Elizabeth Sowle Bradford (1663? - 1731)
Roger Wolcott (1679 - 1767)
Mary French (1687? - )

Eighteenth Century

Settlement and Religion

Sarah Kemble Knight (1666 - 1727)
Louis Armand de Lom d'Arce, Baron de Lahontan (1666 - 1715)
William Byrd II (1674 - 1744)
Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758)
Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713 - 1755)
John Woolman (1720 - 1772)
Francisco Palou (1723 - 1789)

A Sheaf of Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Poetry

Ebenezer Cook (1667 - 1733)
Susanna Wright (1697 - 1784)
Richard Lewis (1700? - 1734)
William Dawson (1704 - 1752)
Jane Colman Turell (1708 - 1735)
Lucy Terry (1730 - 1821)
Thomas Godfrey (1736 - 1763)
Annis Boudinot Stockton (1736 - 1801)
Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson (1737 - 1801)
Milcah Martha Moore (1740 - 1829)
Nathaniel Evans (1742 - 1767)
Anna Young Smith (1756 - 1780)
Sarah Wentworth Morton (1759 - 1846)
Margaretta Bleecker Faugères (1771 - 1801)

Voices of Revolution and Nationalism

Handsome Lake (Seneca)
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Mercy Otis Warren (1728 - 1814)
John and Abigail Adams (1735 - 1826)
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735 - 1813)
Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)
Toussaint L'Ouverture (1744? - 1803)
Federalist and Anti-Federalist Contentions

Patriot and Loyalist Songs and Ballads

"Patriot" Voices (1768 - 1780)
"Loyalist" Voices (1774 - 1780)

Contested Visions, American Voices

Jupiter Hammon (1711 - 1806?)
James Grainger (1721? - 1766)
Samson Occom (Mohegan) (1723 - 1792)
Prince Hall (1735? - 1807)
Olaudah Equiano (1745 - 1797)
Judith Sargent Murray (1751 - 1820)
Ann Eliza Bleecker (1752 - 1783)
Philip Freneau (1752 - 1832)
Timothy Dwight (1752 - 1817)
Phillis Wheatley (1753 - 1784)
Lemuel Haynes (1753 - 1833)
Joel Barlow (1754 - 1812)
Royall Tyler (1757 - 1826)
Hendrick Aupaumut (Mahican) (1757 - 1830)
Hannah Webster Foster (1758 - 1840)
Briton Hammon (1760?)
Susanna Haswell Rowson (1762 - 1824)
Charles Brockden Brown (1771 - 1810)

Early Nineteenth Century: 1800-1865

Native America

Seattle (Duwamish) (1786 - 1866)
John Wannuaucon Quinney (Mahican) (1797 - 1855)
William Apess (Pequot) (1798 - )
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Ojibwa) (1800 - 1841)
Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) (1802 - 1839)
George Copway (Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh; Ojibwa) (1818 - 1869)
John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee) (1827 - 1867)

Spanish America

Tales from the Hispanic Southwest (1800? - 1865?)
Pio Pico (1801 - 1894)
Josiah Gregg (1806 - 1850)
Alfred Robinson (1806 - 1895)
Vallejo (1808 - 1890)
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815 - 1882)
Frederick Law Olmstead (1822 - 1903)

The Cultures of New England

Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (1791 - 1865)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892)
Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810 - 1850)
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Harriet E. Wilson (1827? - 1863?)

Race, Slavery, and the Invention of the South

David Walker (1785 - 1830)
Caroline Lee Hentz (1800 - 1856)
Lydia Maria Child (1802 - 1880)
George Fitzhugh (1804 - 1881)
William Lloyd Garrison (1805 - 1879)
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)
Wendell Phillips (1811 - 1884)
Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813 - 1897)
Henry Highland Garnet (1815 - 1882)
Frederick Douglass (1818 - 1895)
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823 - 1911)
Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823 - 1886)

Literature and "The Woman Question"

Sarah Moore Grimké (1792 - 1873)
Sojourner Truth (1797? - 1883)
Angelina Grimké (1805 - 1879)
Fanny Fern (Sara Willis Parton) (1811 - 1872)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 - 1902)

The Development of Narrative

Mike Fink (1770? - 1823?)
Washington Irving (1783 - 1859)
Davy Crockett (1786 - 1836)
James Fenimore Cooper (1789 - 1851)
Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789 - 1867)
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790 - 1870)
Caroline Kirkland (1801 - 1864)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864)
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896)
George Washington Harris (1814 - 1869)
William Wells Brown (1815 - 1884)
Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)
Alice Cary (1820 - 1871)
Elizabeth Stoddard (1823 - 1902)
Rebecca Harding Davis (1831 - 1910)

The Emergence of American Poetic Voices

Songs of the Slaves Songs of White Communities William Cullen Bryant (1794 - 1878)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)
Frances Sargent Locke Osgood (1811 - 1850)
Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

Late Nineteenth Century: 1865-1910

Nation, Regions, Borders

Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton (1832 - 1895)
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835 - 1910)
William Dean Howells (1837 - 1920)
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914?)
Henry James (1843 - 1916)
George Washington Cable (1844 - 1925)
Joel Chandler Harris (1848 - 1908)
Kate Chopin (1851 - 1904)
Grace King (1852 - 1932)
Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858 - 1932)
Hamlin Garland (1860 - 1940)
African American Folktales
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 - 1906)
Alexander Lawrence Posey (1873 - 1908)
John Milton Oskison (1874 - 1947)
Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875 - 1935)
Ghost Dance Songs
Corridos
Jack London (1876 - 1916)
Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900)

Critical Visions of Postbellum America

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825 - 1911)
Standing Bear (Ponca) (1829 - 1908)
Marietta Holley (Josiah Allen's Wife) (1836 - 1926)
Henry Adams (1838 - 1918)
Sarah Winnemucca (Thocmetony) (1844 - 1891)
Charles Alexander Eastman (Sioux) (1858 - 1939)
Anna Julia Cooper (1858? - 1964)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 - 1935)
Finley Peter Dunne (1867 - 1936)
Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)

Development in Women's Writing

Julia A. J. Foote (1823 - 1900)
Louisa May Alcott (1832 - 1888)
Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835 - 1921)
Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840 - 1894)
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 - 1909)
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852 - 1930)
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859 - 1930)

A Sheaf of Poetry by Late-Nineteenth-Century America Women

Adah Menken (1835? - 1868)
Celia Thaxter (1835 - 1894)
Sarah M. B. Piatt (1836 - 1894)
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 - 1919)
Sophie Jewett (1861 - 1909)
E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (1861 - 1913)
Louise Imogen Guiney (1861 - 1920)
Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863 - 1953)
Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn (1876 - 1959)

The Making of "Americans"

José Martí (1853 - 1895)
Abraham Cahan (1860 - 1951)
Edith Maud Eaton (Sui-Sin Far) (1865 - 1914)
Mary Austin (1868 - 1934)
Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa) (Sioux) (1876 - 1938)
Mary Antin (1881 - 1949)

Modern Period: 1910-1945

Toward the Modern Age

Booker T. Washington (1856 - 1915)
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868 - 1963)
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 - 1935)
Edgar Lee Masters (1869 - 1950)
James Weldon Johnson (1871 - 1938)
Theodore Dreiser (1871 - 1945)
Ellen Glasgow (1873 - 1945)
Willa Cather (1873 - 1947)
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
Susan Glaspell (1876 - 1948)
Sherwood Anderson (1876 - 1941)
Robinson Jeffers (1887 - 1962)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

Alienation and Literary Experimentation

Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925)
Gertrude Stein (1874 - 1946)
Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)
Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881 - 1941)
William Carlos Williams (1883 - 1963)
Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886 - 1961)
Marianne Moore (1887 - 1972)
Eugene O'Neill (1888 - 1953)
T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
Katherine Anne Porter (1890 - 1980)
Djuna Barnes (1892 - 1982)
E.E. Cummings (1894 - 1962)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)
Louise Bogan (1897 - 1970)
William Faulkner (1897 - 1962)
Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)
Hart Crane (1899 - 1932)

A Sheaf of Political Poetry in the Modern Period

Lola Ridge (1871 - 1941)
Genevieve Taggard (1894 - 1948)
Kenneth Fearing (1902 - 1961)
Joseph Kalar (1906 - 1972)
Edwin Rolfe (1909 - 1954)
Alfred Hayes (1911 - 1985)
Tillie Lerner Olson (1912 - )

The New Negro Renaissance

Anne Spencer (1882 - 1975)
Alain Locke (1885 - 1954)
Claude McKay (1889 - 1948)
Zora Neale Hurston (1891 - 1960)
Nella Larson (1891 - 1964)
Jean Toomer (1894 - 1967)
George Samuel Schuyler (1895 - 1977)
Blues Lyrics
Sterling A. Brown (1901 - 1989)
Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967)
Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1902 - 1981)
Countee Cullen (1903 - 1946)

Issues and Visions in Modern America

H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Randolph Bourne (1886 - 1918)
Mourning Dove (Okanogan) (1888 - 1936)
John Crowe Ransom (1888 - 1974)
Anzia Yezierska (1893 - 1967)
Michael Gold (1893 - 1967)
John Joseph Mathews (Osage) (1894 - 1979)
Charles Reznikoff (1894 - 1976)
John Dos Passos (1896 - 1970)
Allen Tate (1899 - 1979)
Meridel LeSueur (1900 - 1996)
John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)
Younghill Kang (1903 - 1972)
D'arcy McNickle (1904 - 1977)
Lillian Hellman (1905 - 1984)
Robert Penn Warren (1905 - 1989)
Clifford Odets (1906 - 1963)
Saunders Redding (1906 - 1988)
Albert Maltz (1908 - 1985)
Richard Wright (1908 - 1960)
Carved on the Walls: Poetry by Early Chinese Immigrants (1910? - 1940?)
Pietro Di Donato (1911 - 1992)
Mary McCarthy (1912 - 1989)
Thomas S. Whitecloud (Chippewa) (1914 - 1972)
Margaret Walker (1915 - )

Contemporary Period: 1945 to the Present

Orthodoxy and Resistance: Cold War Culture and Its Discontents

Ann Petry (1908 - 1997)
Theodore Roethke (1908 - 1963)
Eudora Welty (1909 - )
Charles Olson (1910 - 1970)
Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983)
Elizabeth Bishop (1911 - 1979)
Muriel Rukeyser (1913 - 1980)
Robert Hayden (1913 - 1980)
Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914 - 1994)
Arthur Miller (1915 - )
Robert Traill Spence Lowell, Jr. (1917 - 1977)
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 - )
John Okada (1923 - 1971)
Denise Levertov (1923 - )
James Baldwin (1924 - 1987)
Flannery O'Connor (1925 - 1964)
Mario Suarez (1925 - 1998)
Robert Creeley (1926 - )
Frank O'Hara (1926 - 1966)
James Wright (1927 - 1980)
Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974)
Paule Marshall (1929 - )
Gary Snyder (1930 - )
John Updike (1932 - )
Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963)
Joyce Carol Oates (1938 - )
Frank Chinn (1940 - )

The Beat Movement

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919 - )
Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969)
Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997)

New Communities, New Identities, New Energies

Bernard Malamud (1914 - 1986)
Saul Bellow (1915 - )
Hisaye Yamamoto (1921 - )
Grace Paley (1922 - )
Malcolm X (1925 - 1965)
Edward Albee (1928 - )
Cynthia Ozick (1928 - )
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 - 1968)
Adrienne Rich (1929 - )
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (1930 - 1965)
Ernest J. Gaines (1933 - )
N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) (1934 - )
Tomás Rivera (1935 - 1984)
Lucille Clifton (1936 - )
Michael S. Harper (1938 - )
Nicholasa Mohr (1938 - )
Toni Cade Bambara (1939 - 1995)
James Welch (Blackfeet-Gros Ventre) (1940 - )
Pat Mora (1942 - )
James Alan McPherson (1943 - )
Victor Hernández Cruz (1949 - )
Carolyn Forché (1950 - )
Garrett Kaoru Hongo (1951 - )

Vietnam Conflict

Norman Mailer (1923 - )
Robert Bly (1926 - )
Michael Herr (1940 - )
Tim O'Brien (1946 - )
Yusef Komunyakaa (1947 - )

Postmodernity and Difference: Promises and Threats

Rolando Hinjosa-Smith (1929 - )
John Barth (1930 - )
Toni Morrison (1931 - )
Donald Barthelme (1931 - 1989)
Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (1934 - )
Audre Lorde (1934 - 1992)
Thomas Pynchon (1937? - )
Ishmael Reed (1938 - )
Maxine Hong Kingston (1940 - )
John Edgar Wideman (1941 - )
Janice Mirikitani (1942 - )
Lee Smith (1944 - )
Jessica Hagedorn (1949 - )
Dorothy Allison (1949 - )
Karen Tei Yamashita (1951 - )
Rita Dove (1952 - )
Gish Jen (1955 - )
Kimiko Hahn (1955 - )
Sherman Alexie (1966 - )