American literature  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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North Americans who would later produce great literature were being born in the first third of the century. In 1803 the great American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston and in 1804 Nathaniel Hawthorne. Finally and most importantly, Edgar Allan Poe in 1809. In 1832, Poe began writing short stories -- including "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" -- that explore previously hidden levels of human psychology and push the boundaries of fiction toward mystery and fantasy.

See also

• Love and Death in the American Novel by Fiedler