A New Literary History of America Book

Timeline

Introduction

Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors

1507

The name “America” appears on a map

Toby Lester

1521, August 13

Mexico in America

Kirsten Silva Gruesz

1536, July 24

Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

Ilan Stavans

1585

“Counterfeited according to the truth”

Michael Gaudio

1607

Fear and love in the Virginia colony

Adam Goodheart

1630

A city upon a hill

Elizabeth Winthrop

1643

A nearer neighbor to the Indians

Ted Widmer

1666, July 10

Anne Bradstreet

Wai Chee Dimock

1670

The American jeremiad

Emory Elliott

1670

The stamp of God’s image

Jason D. LaFountain

1673

The Jesuit relations

Laurent Dubois

1683

Francis Daniel Pastorius

Alfred L. Brophy

1692

The Salem witchcraft trials

Susan Castillo

1693–94, March 4

Edward Taylor

Werner Sollors

1700

Samuel Sewall, The Selling of Joseph

David Blight

1722

Benjamin Franklin, The Silence Dogood Letters

Joyce E. Chaplin

1740

The Great Awakening

Joanne van der Woude

1740s, September 13-14 1814, Yankee Doodle goes to town; Francis Scott Key writes The Star-Spangled Banner

1765, December 23

Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur

Leo Damrosch

1773, September

Phillis Wheatley

Rafia Zafar

1776

The Declaration of Independence

Frank Kelleter

1784, June

Charles Willson Peale

Michael Leja

1787

James Madison, Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention

Mitchell Meltzer

1787–1790

John Adams, Discourses on Davila

John Diggins

1791

Philip Freneau and The National Gazette

Jefrey L. Pasley

1796

Washington’s farewell address

François Furstenberg

1798

Mary Rowlandson and the Alien and Sedition Acts

Nancy Armstrong

1798

American gothic

Marc Amfreville

1801, March 4

Jefferson’s first inaugural address

Jan Ellen Lewis

1804, January

The matter of Haiti

Kaiama Glover

1809

Cupola of the world

Judith Richardson

1819

The Missouri crisis

John Stauffer

1820, November 27

Landscape with birds

Christoph Irmscher

1821

Sequoyah, the Cherokee syllabary

Lisa Brooks

1821, June 30

Junius Brutus Booth

Coppelia Kahn

1822

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the Ojibwe firefly, and Longfellow’s Hiawatha

David Treuer

1825, November

Thomas Cole and the Hudson River

Alan Wallach

1826, July 4

Songs of the republic

Steve Erickson

1826

Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales

Richard Hutson

1826; 1927

Transnational poetry

Stephen Burt

1827

Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon

Terryl L. Givens

1828

David Walker, Appeal, in Four Articles

Tommie Shelby

1830, May 21

Jump Jim Crow

W. T. Lhamon, Jr.

1831, March 5

The Cherokee Nation decision

Philip Deloria

1832, July 10

President Jackson’s bank veto

Dan Feller

1835, January

Democracy in America

Ted Widmer

1835

William Gilmore Simms, The Yemasseee

Jefrey Johnson

1835

The Sacred Harp

Sean Wilentz

1836, February 23–March 6

The Alamo and Texas border writing

Norma E. Cantú

1836, February 28

Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

Kirsten Silva Gruesz

1837, August 31

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”

James Conant

1838, July 15

“The Divinity School Address”

Herwig Friedl

1838, September 3

The slave narrative

Caille Millner

1841

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

Robert Clark

1846, June

James Russell Lowell’s Biglow Papers

Shelley Streeby

1846, late July

Henry David Thoreau

Jonathan Arac

1850

The Scarlet Letter

Bharati Mukherje

1850, July 19

Margaret Fuller and the Transcendentalist Movement

Lawrence Buell

1850, August 5

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville

Clark Blaise

1851, Moby-Dick

1851

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Beverly Lowry

1852

Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance and utopian communities

Winfried Fluck

1852, July 5

Frederick Douglass, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”

Liam Kennedy

1854, March

Maria Cummins and sentimental fiction

Cindy Weinstein

1855

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Angus Fletcher

1858

The Lincoln-Douglas debates

Michael T. Gilmore

1859

The science of the Indian

Scott Richard Lyons

1861

Emily Dickinson

Susan Stewart

1862, December 13

The journeys of Little Women

Shirley Samuels

1865, March 4

Lincoln’s second inaugural address

Ted Widmer

1865

“Conditions of repose”

Robin Kelsey

1869, March 4

Carl Schurz

Michael Boyden

1872, November 5

All men and women are created equal

Laura Wexler

1875

The Winchester Rifle

Merritt Roe Smith

1876, January 6

Melville in the dark

Kenneth W. Warren

1876, March 10

The art of telephony

Avital Ronell

1878

“How to Make Our Ideas Clear”

Christopher Hookway

1879

John Muir and nature writing

Scott Slovic

1881, January 24

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady

Alide Cagidemetrio

1884

Mark Twain’s hairball

Ishmael Red

1884, July

The Linotype machine

Lisa Gitelman

1884, November

The Southwest imagined

Leah Dilworth

1885

The problem of error

James Conant

1885, July

Limits to violence

James Dawes

1885, October

Writing New Orleans

Andrei Codrescu

1888, The introduction of motion pictures

1889, August 28

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Yael Schacher

1893

Chief Simon Pokagon and Native American literature

David Treuer

1895

Ida B. Wells, A Red Record

Jacqueline Goldsby

1896

Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of Lowly Life

Judith Jackson Fossett

1896, September 6

Queen Lili‘uokalani

Rob Wilson

1897, Memorial Day

The Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Monument

Richard Powers

1898, June 22

Literature and imperialism

Amy Kaplan

1899; 1924

McTeague and Greed

Gilberto Perez

1900

Henry Adams

T. J. Jackson Lears

1900

The Wizard of Oz

Gerald Early

1900; 1905

Sister Carrie and The House of Mirth

Farah Jasmine Grifin

1901

Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition

John Edgar Wideman

1901-1903, The problem of the color line

1903, May 5

“The real American has not yet arrived”

Aviva Taubenfeld

1903

The invention of the blues

Luc Sante

1903

One sees what one sees

Daniel Albright

1904, August 30

Henry James in America

Ross Posnock

1905, October 15

Little Nemo in Slumberland

Katherine Roeder

1906, April 9

The Azusa Street revival

R. J. Smith

1906, April 18 , 5:14 a.m.

The San Francisco Earthquake

Kathleen Moran

1911

“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”

Philip Furia

1912, April 15

Lifeboats cut adrift

Alan Ackerman

1912

The lure of impossible things

Heather Love

1912

Tarzan begins his reign

Gerald Early

1913

A modernist moment

Bonnie Costello

1915

D. W. Griffith, The Birth of a Nation

Richard Schickel

1915

Robert Frost

Christian Wiman

1917

The philosopher and the millionaire

Richard J. Bernstein

1920, August 10

Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues”

Daphne A. Brooks

1921

Jean Toomer

Elizabeth Alexander

1922

T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence

Anita Patterson

October 1923, Chaplinesque

1924

F. O. Matthiessen meets Russell Cheney

Robert Polito

1924, May 26

The Johnson-Reed Act and ethnic literature

Yael Schacher

1925

The Great Gatsby

Lan Tran

1925, June

Sinclair Lewis

Jefrey Ferguson

1925, July

The Scopes trial

Michael Kazin

1925, August 16

Dorothy Parker

Catherine Keyser

1926

Fire!!

Carla Kaplan

1926

Hardboiled

Walter Mosley

1926

The Book-of-the-Month Club

Joan Shelley Rubin

1927

Carl Sandburg and The American Songbag

Paul Muldoon

1927, May 16

“Free to develop their faculties”

Jefrey Rosen

1928, April 8, Easter Sunday

Dilsey Gibson goes to church

Werner Sollors

1928, Summer

John Dos Passos

Phoebe Kosman

1928, November 18

The mouse that whistled

Karal Ann Marling

1930

“You're swell!”

Robert Gottlieb

1930, March

The Silent Enemy

Micah Treuer

October 1930, Grant Wood's American Gothic"

1931, March 19

Nevada legalizes gambling

David Thomson

1932

Edmund Wilson, The American Jitters

Anthony Grafton