Colonial Visions & Revolution

Use the timeline above to explore the Colonial period and the American Revolution. Clicking the link under a writer’s picture will show you more about that writer, and buttons will help you explore the era. You can also scroll down the page to read about all the writers in this time period.

Literature in the Early United States

Before the Declaration of Independence, the most prevalent writing was nonfiction by the various settlers in the colonies that would become the United States of America. After independence was declared in 1776, American literature was concerned with the nation’s future and explored this concept in non-fiction, novels, and even poetry. Learn more about the colonial, revolutionary, and other periods at Encyclopaedia Britannica here.

Click the buttons below for more information about different aspects of the colonial and revolutionary eras.

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Anne Bradstreet

1612-1672

Poet

While still a teen, Anne Bradstreet left England with her parents and husband to settle in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650) made her the first published poet of America.

Bradstreet’s poems explore science, religion, and philosophy, reflecting the depth of her education. With her father as teacher, she grew up reading the classics-Homer, Virgil, Plutarch, and many others-and works by English poets. Her writing also drew upon her personal experiences as a mother, wife, and daughter. Deeply devoted to her poetry, she called it “a room of my own.”

Some of Bradstreet’s most compelling poems describe motherhood: the risk and pain of childbirth, the promise of a child’s life, the beauty of grandchildren, and anxiety about the dangers and illnesses that can cut young lives short.

“I had eight birds hatched in one nest,

Four cocks there were, and hens the rest.

I nursed them up with pain and care,

Nor cost, nor labour did I spare,

Till at last they felt their wing,

Mounted the trees, and learned to sing.”

– Anne Bradstreet, “In Reference to her Children, 23 June 1659”

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Mary Rowlandson

1637-1711

Memoirist

Mary Rowlandson was born in England and emigrated to America as a young girl. When she was in her mid-30s, she and her children were captured by Native American raiders. She remained in captivity for 11 weeks, until she was ransomed and freed. Her surviving two children were returned later.

Rowlandson wrote about her experiences, expressing mixed feelings for her captors. She both criticized them and described acts of kindness. In doing so, Rowlandson launched a new genre, the “Indian captivity narrative.” Subsequent narratives stoked national myths and fed anti-Native American sentiment among immigrant settlers and their descendants.

As explained in an anonymous introduction, Rowlandson’s “modesty” made her reluctant to publish her story, but she was persuaded to do so in order that “God might have his due glory and others benefit by it.’ The unnamed contributor was probably Increase Mather, an influential minister who may also have served as Rowlandson’s editor. His words of support helped bring the book greater attention.

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Thomas Jefferson

1743-1826

Politician, Letter Writer

As the primary creator of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson established “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as national ideals. The Virginian was also a lawyer, farmer, architect, inventor–and a prolific writer, penning one book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), and over 20,000 letters.

Jefferson’s public documents and speeches are famously bold. However, his letters reveal nuanced and even conflicted thoughts on many national issues, including slavery, which he once called an “abominable crime.”

Jefferson was a serious book collector. In fact, he wrote to John Adams in 1815 “I cannot live without books.” Jefferson meticulously arranged his library according to his own classifications. His 1789 Catalog of Books runs 50 pages long.

Jefferson has been a source of inspiration for his presidential successors. President John F. Kennedy once remarked at a notable 1961 state dinner that “this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

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Abigail Adams

1744-1818

Correspondent, Activist

Over the courses of her life, Abigail Adams exchanged more than 1,100 letters with her husband, John Adams, the second president of the United States. These correspondences provide an invaluable firsthand account of the turbulent years surrounding the founding of a new nation.

The letters also provide insight into a remarkable marriage. Adams’s letters speak with candor and loving intimacy about her relationship with her husband. Her keen eye for politics and social change kept him informed while he was abroad on government business. She also argued passionately and persuasively on behalf of women’s rights and against slavery.

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Phillis Wheatley

1753-1784

Poet

Kidnapped in West Africa, Phillis Wheatley was renamed after the ship that brought her to Boston to be sold as a slave. Her owners gave the precocious child an education, unusual at a time when enslaved African-Americans could be punished for knowing how to read.

At the age of 20, Wheatley became the first published African-American author with Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). The acclaim she received must have been particularly sweet after enduring earlier skepticism about her ability to write. She gained her freedom in 1778, but died, impoverished, at only 31.

Wheatley so impressed George Washington with the following poem that he asked to meet her. During their brief visit, he treated Wheatley with a respect unusual for a slave owner.

“Fam’d for thy valour, for thy virtues more

Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!”

– Phillis Wheatley, “To His Excellency George Washington” (1775)

Wheatley’s poetry addressed the theological, social and political issues of her day. She frequently touched on the theme of liberty, believing that culture, like freedom, should belong to all people.

“While yet (O deed Ungenerous!) they disgrace

And hold in bondage Afric’s blameless race?

Let Virtue reign—And thou accord our prayers

Be victory our’s, and generous freedom theirs.”

– Phillis Wheatley, “On the Death of General Wooster” (1778)

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James Fenimore Cooper

1789-1851

Novelist

Raised in a well-to-do New York state family, James Fenimore Cooper rebelled against his upbringing by getting expelled from Yale University and spending his inheritance. He turned to writing in his 30s to support his young family.

Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales (five novels published between 1823 and 1841) shaped the myth of the American frontier by celebrating self-reliance and the lure of the wild. He also romanticized Native American culture through his fictional hero, Natty Bumpo, a white frontiersman raised among the Delaware. Yet as ruggedly American as the Leatherstocking Tales may be, Cooper modeled them on the historic romances of British author Sir Walter Scott.

“Cooper understood more clearly than any writer before him that the American story was about the relentless, violent struggle between indigenous peoples and immigrant intruders of every description, for land, for power, for the right to define the future. His novels are haunted by unfathomable terror, and driven by greed, self-serving egotism, racism, and murderous impulse. But he also felt deeply that America promised a new start for humanity.”

– Max Rudin, Vice President & Publisher, Library of America

Cooper’s captivating novels made him famous at home and in Europe. Composer Franz Schubert, dying in Vienna in 1828, appealed to a friend:

“I have read Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, Spy, Pilot, and Pioneers. If by any chance you have anything else of his, I beg you to leave it for me at the coffee-house.”

Exhibit Overview

The New Nation (1836-1876)

Literature in the Early United States

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Anne Bradstreet

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Mary Rowlandson

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Thomas Jefferson

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Abigail Adams

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Phillis Wheatley

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James Fenimore Cooper

First Encounters

Age of Enlightenment

The Great Awakening