Timetable of American History & Literature

1609-1776 Puritan/Colonial Period in New England
1607-9
Jamestown founded, Hudson explores Hudson River
1611
King James Bible
1620
Arrival of the Mayflower at Plymouth, Mayflower Compact
1622
first regular newspaper
1580-1631
Captain John Smith saved by Pocahontas and writes The General History of Virginia 
1630
John Winthrop leads the Puritan migration to Massachusetts Bay.  Prints his journal, A History of New England
1633
Harvard College founded
William Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation
1640
First book published in America, the Bay Psalm Book
1647
George Fox begins to preach
1662
Wigglesworth poem, Day of Doom
1667-78
To My dear and Loving Husband, Anne Bradstreet
George Fox (1624-1692) preaching
1682
Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity and Restauration
1692
Salem witch trials
1700
Population of English colonies reaches 250,000
1702-1714
First American newspaper
Cotton Mather, Puritan essays to reconcile religion & science; a clergyman, theologian, writer (Puritan literary ideal). Ecclesiastical History of New England
1729-1734
Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (famous sermon)
Wesley brothers visit America
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

1754-63
French-Indian War
Birth of the novel
Rousseau (1712-1778), French philosopher 
1758
Jonathan Edwards becomes president of College of N.J.(later called, Princeton), dies of an inoculation
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
French Voltaire, Candide, brutal mockery of Job
1754-63
French and Indian War
Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
1772
On the Rising Glory of America, Philip Freneau (Princeton commencement poem)
1773
Boston tea party
Phillis Wheatley, On being … Africa to America
1775
Battle at Concord's North Bridge

1776-1820 Democratic Origins & Revolutionary Writers, Romanticism, Pantheism
Cult of nature, stop thinking, start feeling

1776
Declaration of Independence/War of Independence
1787-94
The Constitution ratified by the states.  Alexander Hamilton and James Madison write 85 essays defending constitution, the Federalist Papers.
George Washington elected first president of the United States
1791
The Bill of Rights ratified by the states
1800
Biology becomes a recognized area of study
Thomas Jefferson elected president
1803-6
Lewis & Clark expedition
1807-8
James Madison elected president

1820-1865 American Romantic Renaissance Movement Victorian/Realism/Naturalism
Romantic/Neoclassic, emerging Romanticism

1811-1828
Emerson lives with grandparents in Concord in the Old Manse during War of 1812 at age eleven
Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Jane Austen
Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving
Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
Thanatopsis, Wm Cullen Bryant, links American literature to English Romanticism
Henry David Thoreau bn. in Concord in 1817 (d.1862)
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, insists America has her own language

1831-1836
Darwin sails on the Beagle to the Galapagos Islands
Siege of the Alamo; Texas declares its independence
Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), spokesman for Transcendentalism, pub. anonymously  

1837
Birds of America, John James Audubon (1785-1851)
Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Phi Beta Kappa Harvard address

1840
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).  Invented detective story.
The Alcotts move to Concord, collaborate with Emerson to publish transcendental journal, the Dial
1841
Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64)rents the Old Manse, former home of Emerson’s grandfather, for three years
Thoreau’s brother and Emerson’s son die
Alcott’s begin a one year experiment in communal living on 90-acre farm near Harvard, MA
1844
Samuel Morse invents the telegraph
The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
Emerson purchases “a wood lot by Walden Pond”
1845
United States annexes Texas
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, by Frederick Douglass
Alcott’s buy a place .5 miles from Emerson with grant from Emerson, name it Hillside 
Emerson begins 2-year experiment in cabin on Emerson’s land by Walden Pond.  Anti-slavery society meets on his doorstep
1830-47
Mormon trek westward
Evangeline, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte.
1848
Gold discovered in California
1850
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, American romanticism with Puritan roots
Charles G Finney (1792-1875) preaching
1851
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1819-1891)
1852
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Idylls of the King, Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
Hawthornes return to Concord and purchase the Alcott’s home, renaming it the Wayside
1854-1859
Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau(self reliance, contemplate nature)
Origin of Species, Darwin
1855
Leaves of Grass, ded. to Thoreau, by Walt Whitman
1857-1859
The Dred Scott decision
1860
Abraham Lincoln elected president
1861
Outbreak of the Civil War; first battle of Bull Run
Thoreau diees in 1862 of TB, buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
1863
Emancipation Proclamation
Battles of Vicksburg & Gettysburg
1865
Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House
end of the Civil War
Assassination of President Lincoln

Post-Civil War- 1914
Rise of realism to naturalism

1867
Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens (1835-1910)leads away from romanticism towards realism
United States purchases Alaska
C H Spurgeon (1834-1892) preaching
1868
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Edward M Bounds (1835-1913) preaching
1869
completion of the first transcontinental railroad
John D. Rockefeller forms the Standard Oil Company
1872
Emerson’s home burns, the Alcott sisters rescue some manuscripts, he leaves abroad
1873
Emerson, now 70, returns home to find his home and library restored by friends and neighbors
1876
telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell
1877
phonograph invented by Thomas Edison
incandescent bulb invented by Edison
Alcott’s purchase the Thoreau house
1880
population exceeds 50 million
1881-1884
Emily Dickinson (1830-86), various poetry
The Joyful Knowledge, Nietzsche, God is dead!
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1843-1916)
gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (first modern American novel)
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) visits Emerson and walks the Walden woods
1882
Emerson dies, buried on Author’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
1886-1893
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane
Bronson Alcott dies, Louisa May dies two days later, buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Chicago World's Fair
1895
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Time Machine, H G Wells (1866-1945)
invention of motion picture
1898
Spanish-American War

1903
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
the Wright brothers' first flight
1904
The Golden Bowl by Henry James
1909
first Model T Ford produced
1911
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
1913
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

1914-1965 Modern/Agnostic
disillusionment with ideals and civilization, American drama flourishes 

North of Boston by Robert Frost
outbreak of World War I
completion of the Panama Canal

1915
German submarine sinks Lusitania
Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
1917
United States enters into World War I
1919-1922
Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Prohibition enacted
population exceeds 100 million
Ulysses, James Joyce (1882-1941)
1925-1926
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, helped create roaring twenties image
Scopes Trial
My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D H Lawrence 
Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic
1929
The Sound and the Fury by Wm. Faulkner (1897-1962)
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Stock Market Crash
1930
E E  Cummings (1894-1962) experimental poetry
television broadcasting begins
1937
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1902-68)
outbreak of World War II in Asia
1938
Orson Welles' radio broadcast "War of the Worlds" Our Town, Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)
1939-1942
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Collected Poems, A E Housman (1859-1936)
outbreak of World War II in Europe
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
United States enters World War II
1945
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Post WWII

1944
The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams 
1949
Dr Faustus, Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, realism
1984, George Orwell 
1951
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Complete Poems, Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
1952
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
1953
end of Korean War
Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
On Poets and Poetry, T S Eliot (1888-1965)
1961
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
1963
assassination of President John F. Kennedy

1965-	Post-Modern/Atheistic
Nihilistic, anti-Christian, fully subjective

1968
Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated
Robert Kennedy assassinated
Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll
1969
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Neil Armstrong becomes first man on the moon
Woodstock, the event and the poem by Joni Mitchell
1973
Vietnam Peace Agreement
1974
resignation of President Nixon over Watergate scandal
1989
end of the Cold War

RESOURCES:

The Oxford Companion to American Literature
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/home.htm
http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/amlitchron_16th.html
www.thelmaslibrary.com

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