Colonial Period to 1700

The Eighteenth Century

Early Nineteenth Century: 1800-1865

Late Nineteenth Century: 1865-1910

Modern Period: 1910-1945

Contemporary Period:  1945 to the Present

Colonial Period to 1700

Native American Oral Literatures

Native American Oral Narrative

Native American Oral Poetry

"Creation of the Whites" (Yuchi)

The Literature of Discovery and Exploration

• Christopher Columbus
• Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca
• A Gentleman of Elvas
• René Goulaine de Laudonnière
• Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
• Fray Marcos de Niza
• Pedro de Casteñeda
• Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá
• Samuel de Champlain

Handsome Lake (Seneca)

John Smith (1580-1631)

Edward Maria Wingfield (1560?-1613?)

Richard Frethorne (fl. 1623)

Thomas Morton (1579?-1647?)

John Winthrop (1588-1649)

William Bradford (1590-1657)

Roger Williams (1603?-1683)

Anne Bradstreet (1612?-1672)

Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705)

The Bay Psalm Book (1640) and The New England Primer (1683?)

Mary White Rowlandson (1637?-1711)

Edward Taylor (1642?-1729)

Samuel Sewall (1652-1730)

Cotton Mather (1663-1728)

John Williams (1664-1729)

A Selection of Seventeenth-Century Poetry

• Edward Johnson
• John Saffin
• George Alsop
• Sarah Whipple Goodhue
• Benjamin Tompson
• Richard Steere
• Anna Tompson Hayden
• Elizabeth Sowle Bradford
• Bathsheba Bowers
• Roger Wolcott
• Mary French

Tales of Incorporation, Resistance, and Reconquest in New Spain

• History of the Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531
• Don Antonio de Otermín
• The Coming of the Spanish and the Pueblo Revolt (Hopi)
• Don Diego de Vargas

The Eighteenth Century

Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727)

William Byrd II (1674-1744)

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713-1755)

John Woolman (1720-1772)

A Selection of Eighteenth-Century Poetry

• Ebenezer Cook
• Richard Lewis
• William Dawso
• Jane Coleman Turell
• Bridget Richardson Fletcher
• Mercy Otis Warren
• Lucy Terry
• Thomas Godfrey
• Annis Boudinot Stockton
• Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson
• Milcah Martha Moore
• Nathaniel Evans
• Ann Eliza Bleecker
• Anna Young Smith
• Sarah Wentworth Morton

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

James Grainger (1721?-1766)

John Leacock (1729-1802)

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813)

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

John Adams (1735-1826) and Abigail Adams (1744-1818)

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Patriot and Loyalist Songs and Ballads

Jupiter Hammon (1711-1806?)

Samson Occom (Mohegan) (1723-1792)

Briton Hammon (fl. 1760)

Prince Hall (1735?-1807)

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797)

Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820)

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)

Susanna Haswell Rowson (1762-1824)

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810)

Federalist and Anti-Federalist Contentions

Fray Carlos José Delgado (1677--post-1750)

Francisco Palou (1723-1789)

Early Ninteenth Century: 1800-1865

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Ojibwa) (1800-1841)

Tales from the Hispanic Southwest

Washington Irving (1783-1859)

Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851)

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Humor of the Old Southwest

• Davy Crockett
• Mike Fink
• Augustus Baldwin Longstreet
• George Washington Harris

George Copway (Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh; Ojibwa) (1818-1869)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813-1897)

William Apess (Pequot) (1798-?)

John Wannuaucon Quinney (Mahican) (1797-1855)

Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) (c.1802-1839)

Seattle (Duwamish) (1786-1866)

John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee) (1827-1867)

David Walker (1785-1830)

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)

Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880)

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

Angelina Grimké Weld (1805-1879)

Henry Highland Garnet (1815-1882)

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884)

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911)

Caroline Lee Hentz (1800-1856)

George Fitzhugh (1804-1881)

Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823-1886)

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Sarah Moore Grimké (1792-1873)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)

Fanny Fern (Sara Willis Parton) (1811-1872)

Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883)

Francis Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)

Juan Nepomuceno Seguin (1806-1890)

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1808-1890)

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Caroline Kirkland (1801-1864)

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

William Wells Brown (1815-1884)

Alice Cary (1820-1871)

Elizabeth Stoddard (1823-1902)

Harriet E. Wilson (1827?-1863?)

Songs and Ballads

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (1791-1865)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Frances Sargent Locke Osgood (1811-1850)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Late Nineteenth Century: 1865-1910

Julia A. J. Foote (1823-1900)

Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910)

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)

Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835-1921)

Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894)

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844-1911)

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930)

A Sheaf of Poetry by Late-Nineteenth Century American Women

• Adah Menken
• Celia Thaxter
• Louise Chandler Moulton
• Sarah M. E. Piatt
• Ella Wheeler Wilcox
• Edith Thomas
• Lizette Woodworth Reese
• Sophie Jewett
• E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)
• Louise Imogen Guiney
• Elaine Goodale Eastman
• Alice Dunbar-Nelson (or see below)

A Sheaf Within a Sheaf: Poems from the 1890s

• Florence Earle Coates
• Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (or see above)
• Ella Higginson
• Eleanor B. Caldwell
• Anne Throop
• Ethel Balton
• Maude Caldwell Perry
• Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn

African-American Folktales

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835-1910)

George Washington Cable (1844-1925)

Grace King (1852-1932)

Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)

Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932)

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

Alexander Lawrence Posey (Creek) (1873-1908)

John Milton Oskison (Cherokee) (1874-1947)

Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)

William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

Henry James (1843-1916)

Kate Chopin (1851-1904)

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

Hamlin Garland (1860-1940)

Frank Norris (1807-1902)

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

Jack London (1876-1916)

Standing Bear (Ponca) (1829-1908)

Ghost Dance Songs

Charles Alexander Eastman (Sioux) (1858-1939)

Sarah Winnemucca (Thocmetony) (c. 1844-1891)

Marietta Holley (pseud. "Josiah Allen's Wife") (1836-1926)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)

Anna Julia Cooper (1858?-1964)

Charlotte Perkins Gillman (1860-1935)

José Martí (1853-1895)

Corridos

Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)

Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

Henry Adams (1838-1918)

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

Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915)

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963)

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945)

Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950)

Willa Cather (1873-1947)

Susan Glaspell (1876-1948)

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982)

Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881-1941)

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961)

A Sheaf of Political Poetry in the Modern Period

• Joseph Kalar
• Kenneth Fearing
• Alfred Hayes
• Tillie Lerner Olsen (or see below)
• Kay Boyle
• Langston Hughes (or see below)
• Lola Ridge
• Edwin Rolfe
• Genevieve Taggard

E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Katharine Anne Porter (1890-1980)

Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

Louise Bogan (1897-1970)

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Hart Crane (1899-1932)

Alain Locke (1885-1954)

Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Countee Cullen (1903-1946)

Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1902-1981)

Arna Bontemps (1902-1973)

Sterling A. Brown (1901-1989)

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

Claude McKay (1889-1948)

Anne Spencer (1882-1975)

Nella Larsen (1891-1964)

George Samuel Schuyler (1895-1977)

Blues Lyrics

Randolph Bourne (1886-1918)

Anzia Yezierska (1881?-1970)

Michael Gold (1893-1967)

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)

Albert Maltz (1908-1985)

Lillian Hellman (1905-1984)

Mary McCarthy (1912-1989)

Clifford Odets (1906-1963)

Meridel LeSueur (1900-1996)

Mourning Dove (Okanogan) (1888-1936)

John Joseph Mathews (Osage) (1894-1979)

Thomas S. Whitecloud (Chippewa) (1914-1972)

D'Arcy McNickle (1904-1977)

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)

John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)

Allen Tate (1899-1979)

Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976)

Louis Zukofsky ((1904-1978)

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

Richard Wright (1908-1960)

Margaret Walker (b. 1915)

Saunders Redding (1906-1988)

Pietro di Donato (1911-1992)

Younghill Kang (1903-1972)

Carved on the Walls: Poetry by Early Chinese Immigrants

Contemporary Period: 1945 to the Present

Arthur Miller (b. 1915)

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

Ann Petry (1908-1997)

Carlos Bulosan (1913-1956)

Eudora Welty (b. 1909)

Lee Smith (b. 1944)

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)

John Updike (b. 1932)

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994)

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

Paule Marshall (b. 1929)

John Okada (1923-1971)

Tillie Lerner Olsen (b. 1912)

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)

Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

Robert Traill Spence Lowell, Jr. (1917-1977)

Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

Robert Creeley (b. 1926)

Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

Charles Olson (1910-1970)

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)

Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

James Wright (1927-1980)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (1930-1965)

Edward Albee (b. 1928)

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Malcolm X (1925-1965)

Saul Bellow (b. 1915)

Grace Paley (b. 1922)

Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)

Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)

Hisaye Yamamoto (b. 1921)

Pedro Pietri (b. 1944)

Rudolfo Anaya (b. 1937)

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (b. 1934)

Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934)

Lucille Clifton (1936)

Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933)

Etheridge Knight (1931-1991)

Alice Walker (b. 1944)

Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995)

James Alan McPherson (b. 1943)

Michael S. Harper (b. 1938)

June Jordan (b. 1936)

Marge Piercy (b. 1936)

N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) (b. 1934)

James Welch (Blackfeet-Gros Ventre) (b. 1940)

Tomás Rivera (1935-1984)

Nicholasa Mohr (b. 1938)

Pat Mora (b. 1942)

Victor Hernández Cruz (b. 1949)

Garrett Kaoru Hongo (b. 1951)

David Henry Hwang (b. 1957)

John Barth (b. 1930)

Donald Barthelme (1931-1989)

Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937?)

Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith (b. 1929)

John Edgar Wideman (b. 1941)

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

Maxine Hong Kingston (b. 1940)

Amy Tan (b. 1952)

Gish Jen (b. 1955)

Janice Mirikitani (b. 1942)

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982)

John Ashbery (b. 1927)

Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

Michael Herr (b. 1940)

Carolyn Forché (b. 1950)

Gloria Anzaldúa (b. 1942)

Judith Ortiz Cofer (b. 1952)

Tato Laviera (b. 1951)

Helena María Viramontes (b. 1954)

Gary Soto (b. 1952)

Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

Joy Harjo (Creek) (b. 1951)

Roberta Hill Whiteman (Oneida) (b. 1947)

Louise Erdrich (Chippewa) (b. 1954)

Wendy Rose (Hopi) (b. 1948)

Cathy Song (b. 1955)

Rita Dove (b. 1952)

Li-Young Lee (b. 1957)

Lorna Dee Cervantes (b. 1954)

Aurora Levins Morales (b. 1954)

Bharati Mukherjee (b. 1940)

Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna) (b. 1948)

Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954)

Simon Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo) (b. 1941)

Toni Morrison (b. 1931)