American Literature

• the type if literature written or produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies
• During its early history, America was a series of British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States. Setting its literary tradition to be linked 
• The New England colonies were the center of early American literature.
• It was in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that the nation’s first novels were published
• American poetry reached its peak in the early-to-mid-20th century
• Like other national literatures, American literature was shaped by the history of the country that produced it.
• American poetry, drama, fiction, and social and literary criticism 
• At first was naturally a colonial literature, by authors who were Englishmen and who thought and wrote as such.
• the bitter war worked to find the new nation’s government, they were influenced by a number of very effective political writers
• After the American Revolution, American writers were exhorted to produce a literature that was truly native