Beginning of Essay
The years from the adoption of the Constitution (1787) to the period of Jacksonian nationalism (1828-36) mark the emergence of a self-consciously national literature. The poet Joel BARLOW, who was, like John Trumbull, one of the Connecticut Wits, greeted the ....

Middle of Essay
.... In contrast to the prevailing sentimental novel was Hugh Henry Brackenridge's massive Modern Chivalry (1792-1815), a picaresque novel with an underlying satire on bad government. The first professional novelist was Charles Brockden Brown, whose gothic and philosophical romances, beginning with Wieland (1798), anticipated Edgar Allan Poe. Early in the 19th century, Washington IRVING gained European recognition as America's first genuine man of letters. A History of New York (1809) is a whimsical satire of pedantic historians and literary classics. His best-known tales, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," appeared in The Ske ....