American Literature Events

1819 May 31 Walt Whitman is Born
Walt Whitman, American poet, journalist, and essayist, was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, New York. His verse collection Leaves of Grass is a landmark in the history of American li...
1820 Nov 20 A 20-Ton Sperm Whale Sinks the Whaling Ship Essex
On 20 November, The Essex sighted a school of whales, and all three boats set off in pursuit. But Chase had bad luck again, as a whale immediately holed his boat. Cutting the line on the ...
1831 Jun 24 Rebecca Harding Davis is Born
Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (1831-1910; born Rebecca Blaine Harding) was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary Realism in American literature. Her most i...
1850 Mar 16 'The Scarlet Letter' is Published
The truth is that the situation selected by Hawthorne has more scope and depth than the one which he passed over. It is with the subjective consequences of a sinner's act that our underst...
1851 Oct 18 'Moby Dick' is Published
Its reputation invariably preceding it, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is a novel like no other. Whether readers expect a subtle work of art, a rollicking adventure story, or a ponderous, in...
1854 "Walden" is Published
Thoreau was 27 when he took up residence in the cabin by Walden Pond; he had graduated from Harvard 19th in his class, tried teaching, helped his father in the family pencil business, did...
1855 Jul 4 The First Edition of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" Is Published
When Walt Whitman published his first edition of Leaves of Grass on or around the fourth day of July in 1855, he believed he was embarking on a personal literary journey of national signi...
1861 'Great Expectations' is Published
The plot of Great Expectations is also noticeable as indicating, better than any of his previous stories, the individuality of Dickens's genius. Everybody must have discerned in the actio...
1861 Walt Whitman Publishes "Beat! Beat! Drums!" During The Civil War
As the American Civil War was beginning, Whitman published his poem "Beat! Beat! Drums!" as a patriotic rally call for the North. Whitman's brother George had joined the Union army and be...
1861 Apr "Life in the Iron Mills" is Published
Life in the Iron Mills must be considered a central text in the origins of American realism, American proletarian literature, and American feminism, according to Jean Pfaelzer. The story ...
1864 Feb Henry James' First Short Story "A Tragedy of Error" Is Published
A Tragedy of Error is the title of a short story by American writer Henry James, his first, written at the age of 21 and published anonymously in the February 1864 issue of Continental Mo...
1865 Nov Walt Whitman Publishes "O Captain! My Captain!"
" My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will; The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and..." —Final stanza of "O Captain! My Captain!"
1868 Feb 23 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois is Born
"History cannot ignore W.E.B. DuBois because history has to reflect truth and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his..." —Martin Luther King Jr.
1868 Sep 30 First Volume of 'Little Women' is Published
Looking for a bestseller, a publisher asked Alcott to write a book for girls. Although reluctant at first, she poured her best talent into the work, and the first volume of the serialized...
1875 Sep 1 Edgar Rice Burroughs is Born
Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875 – March 19, 1950) was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, althoug...
1878 Jun Henry James' "Daisy Miller" Is Published
Considered one of the greatest novelists of the English language, James was also an accomplished writer of short fiction. Shunning what he called "the baseness of the arbitrary stroke," J...
1881 Oct 29 Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady" Is Published
The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880–1881 and then as a book in 1881. It is one of James'...
1885 Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" Is Published
"PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. ..." —Mark Twain ("The Author") in the foreword/introduction to Huckleberry Finn
1886 Feb 16 The Bostonians by Henry James is Published
The Bostonians is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Century Magazine in 1885–1886 and then as a book in 1886. This bittersweet tragicomedy centers on an odd trian...
1898 Oct 13 Henry James' Novella "Turn of the Screw" Is Published
The Turn of the Screw is a novella (short novel) written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and film adapta...
1899 Kate Chopin Publishes "The Awakening"
The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899 (see 1899 in literature). Set in New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana coast at the end of the nineteenth century, the pl...
1899 The Philadelphia Negro is Published
The Philadelphia Negro is a sociological study of the African American people of Philadelphia written by W.E.B. Du Bois. Comissioned by the University of Pennsylvania and published in 189...
1899 Jul 21 Ernest Hemingway Is Born
Ernest Hemingway, born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World ...
1900 May 17 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' is Published
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W.W. Denslow. It was originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, ...
1902 Aug The Wings of the Dove by Henry James is Published
The Wings of the Dove is a 1902 novel by Henry James. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her impact on the people around ...
1903 The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois is Published
The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary hist...
1903 Sep The Ambassadors by Henry James is Published
The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review (NAR). This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James's final period, fol...
1906 Feb 28 'The Jungle' is Published
The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by journalist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel with the intention of portraying the life of the immigrant in the United States, but readers were...
1914 Tarzan of the Apes is Published
Tarzan of the Apes is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first in a series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published in the pulp magazine All-Story Magaz...
1915 The Negro by W.E.B. Du Bois is Published
The Negro is a book by W. E. B. Du Bois published in 1915. The book is an overview of African-American history, tracing it as far back as the sub-Saharan cultures, including Zimbabwe, Gha...
1917 Feb 19 Carson McCullers Is Born
Novelist Carson McCullers, noted for her exploration of the dilemmas of modern American life in the context of the twentieth-century South, was born on February 19, 1917, in Columbus, Ge...
1918 May Ernest Hemingway Joins The Red Cross
Hemingway first went to Paris upon reaching Europe, then traveled to Milan in early June after receiving his orders. The day he arrived, a munitions factory exploded and he had to carry m...
1919 William Faulkner Attends the University of Mississippi
Faulkner was raised in and heavily influenced by the state of Mississippi, as well as by the history and culture of the South as a whole. When he was four years old, his entire family mov...
1921 Sep 3 Ernest Hemingway Marries Hadley Richardson
She was raised in St. Louis, Missouri and married Ernest Hemingway on September 3, 1921. Together they moved to Paris, France, and in the fall of 1923, as Hadley approached the term of he...
1921 Dec
to 1924 Oct
William Faulkner Works as Postmaster of the University of Mississippi
Faulkner’s most notorious stint as a working man was his role of postmaster at the University of Mississippi post office, which incredibly he held for nearly three years. By all accounts,...
1922 Feb Ernest Hemingway is Introduced to Gertrude Stein
In the 1920s, her salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus, with walls covered by avant-garde paintings, attracted many of the great writers of the time, including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Thornto...
1922 Feb Ernest Hemingway Meets Ezra Pound
At the end of 1921, Ezra Pound rented a ground-floor apartment at 70 bis Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs (southwest of the Luxembourg Gardens). Hemingway visited Ezra here often, and commented ...
1922 Mar Ernest Hemingway Meets James Joyce
Hemingway was quick to see the merit in the work of James Joyce, not always a limpid writer. In a letter to Sherwood Anderson dated March 9, 1922, Hemingway wrote: "Joyce has written a...
1924 Aug 2 James Baldwin Is Born
Novelist, essayist, and playwright James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in New York City. The eldest of nine children, Baldwin grew up in poverty-stricken Harlem, where his stepfathe...
1925 'An American Tragedy' is Published
Clyde Griffiths is a young man with ambitions. He's in love with a rich girl, but it's a poor girl he has gotten pregnant, Roberta Alden, who works with him at his uncle's factory. One da...
1925 'In Our Time' Is Published
In Our Time is a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. Each chapter consists of a vignette that in some way relates to the following short story. It was published in 1925, and ...
1925 Apr Ernest Hemingway Meets F. Scott Fitzgerald
In Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast, he describes the first time he met F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Dingo Bar on the rue Delambre where, as Hemingway describes it, “…a very strange thi...
1925 Apr 10 'The Great Gatsby' is Published
It seems to me, though, that no American novel comes closer than "Gatsby" to surpassing literary artistry, and none tells us more about ourselves. In an extraordinarily compressed space -...
1926 'Soldier's Pay' Is Published
The plot of Soldiers' Pay revolves around the return of a wounded aviator home to a small town in Georgia following the conclusion of the First World War. He is escorted home by a veteran...
1926 May 28 'The Torrents of Spring' Is Published
Set in northern Michigan in the mid-1920s The Torrents of Spring is about two World War I veterans, Yogi Johnson and writer Scripps O'Neill, both of whom work at a pump factory. O'Neill's...
1926 Oct 22 'The Sun Also Rises' Is Published
The Sun Also Rises epitomized the post-war expatriate generation for future generations. In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway melds Paris to Spain; vividly depicts the running of the bulls in...
1927 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' is Published
Cather at her most matter-of-fact and, as a consequence, her most powerful. She based this book on the life of Bishop Jean Baptiste L'Amy — she calls him Father Latour — the French-born O...
1927 Jan Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway Are Divorced
Hemingway's marriage to Hadley broke down as he was writing and revising The Sun Also Rises. In the spring of 1926, Hadley became aware of his affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, although she h...
1927 Apr 30 'Mosquitoes' Is Published
Mosquitoes is a comic novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1927. It is the author's second novel. The story tells of the misadventures of passengers on a cruise shi...
1927 May 10 Ernest Hemingway Marries Pauline Pfeiffer
Pauline Marie Pfeiffer (July 22, 1895 – October 21, 1951) was the second wife of the writer Ernest Hemingway. She was born in Parkersburg, Iowa on July 22, 1895, moving to St. Louis in 19...