American Contexts: "Who Reads an American Book?":
Calls for a National Literature (pp. 476-494)
Royall Tyler:
Wrote The Contrast (1787), which is based on a British play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal (1777)
Judith Sargent Murray:
Pseudonym was "Constantia" (Constant, True, Consistent, etc.) -- p. 481
Wrote a series of 100 essays on contemporary culture for a magazine -- used a masculine persona of "The Gleaner" (one who collects gradually from various sources) -- p. 482
Charles Brockden Brown:
Wrote novels of gothic romance
William Tudor:
He was the FIRST editor of the North American Review
"Emphasized the rich materials available to would-be writers in the United States, whom he especially encouraged to exploit the unique resource of the magnificent American landscape" (486)
Addressed the Phi Beta Kappa Society (an honors society) at Harvard College in 1815 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (and others) would later do the same thing -- see p. 670
Application to Washington Irving -- p. 487
Application to William Cullen Bryant -- p. 488
Allusion to Primitivism and the Noble Savage -- p. 489
Application to Philip Freneau -- p. 489
Edward Tyrell Channing:
He was the THIRD editor of the North American Review
"Emphasized the importance of originality and the danger of imitating classical and European literary models" (490)
James Fenimore Cooper:
Wrote a "famous five-novel sequence called the Leather-Stocking Tales" (493) about Natty Bumppo (Leatherstocking) and his adventures on the frontier with an Indian guide and friend
Wrote Notions of the Americans: Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor (1828), "a series of letters written by the 'travelling bachelor' to a variety of European 'gentlemen' who had asked about particular American customs and institutions" (493) -- yet another example of "epistolary form"