Thomas Paine-wrote the famous Common Sense which was a pamphlet of 50 pages on January 1776. This Common Sense was meant to promote independence. He also wrote famous pieces of writings during the American Revolution (16 Crisis Papers, which would be read by General George Washington to his troops at Valley Forge) and also during the French Revolution (The Rights of a Man, which was meant to be in defense of republicanism.) During the Reign of Terror he wrote The Age of Reason, which opposed organized religion. Even though he wrote so many books about important and significant issues during the 1700s he ended up dying in poverty.
Sojourner Truth- Born into slavery, she went through a lot as a black woman in society during the 1800s. She eventually wrote The Narrative of Sojourner Truth which was an autobiography of her life and what she went through as a slave. Along with this book she also set out to speak about her experiences as a slave. (She wrote her book in 1850.)
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau- They were philosophical allies during the 1800s. They met in Concord, Massachusetts where Thoreau lived. Emerson anonymously wrote Nature which brought about the idea of transcendentalism and that also put out the idea that God would be best found in ones own soul. Emerson eventually even joined that transcendental club which just would speak about ideas like these. They also wrote the very famous book Walden which also dealt with issues of transcendentalism.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton- During the 1800s she became very involved with the Womens Rights Movement to give women their deserved rights. She co-edited the newspaper The Revolution which publicly put out the idea of giving women their rights. She also published an autobiography of herself titled Eighty Years and More. She was also able to complete the first three volumes of the six total volume of The History of Womens Suffrage. She wasnt afraid to speak her mind about what she believed in.
Fredrick Douglass- He was the son of a mother who was a slave and of a white father that he never knew. At a young age he worked as a house servant, which allowed him to learn how to read and write.In 1882 he wrote his autobiography, Life and Times of Fredrick Douglass to show what he went through because many couldnt believe that he was ever a slave. He also began his own anti-slavery newspaper titled The North Star which later came to be known as Fredrick Douglasss Papers from 1847-1860. Through the whole Reconstruction Era he continuously fought for civil rights and for the equal rights women in society.
Mark Twain- Born as Samuel Clemens, he took on the name of Mark Twain when he signed a humorous travel account as he was writing the Virginia Citys Territorial Enterprise. At a camp he heard a story and decided to retell it and called it The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. This story, retold, would make him very famous in 1865. Some of his most known and famous pieces of writing were Tom Sawyer (1876), A Tramp Abroad (1880), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), his autobiography called Life on the Mississippi (1884), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court (1889). These werent the only ones that he wrote but just some of the many fictional stories that he wrote. He usually wrote his stories based on the time period and what was going on in the world around him, but the actual story line was all fictional. I still need to finish the rest of them. There are just too many writers in History to have them all in one post!!!
Thomas Paine-wrote the famous Common Sense which was a pamphlet of 50 pages on January 1776. This Common Sense was meant to promote independence. He also wrote famous pieces of writings during the American Revolution (16 Crisis Papers, which would be read by General George Washington to his troops at Valley Forge) and also during the French Revolution (The Rights of a Man, which was meant to be in defense of republicanism.) During the Reign of Terror he wrote The Age of Reason, which opposed organized religion. Even though he wrote so many books about important and significant issues during the 1700s he ended up dying in poverty.
Sojourner Truth- Born into slavery, she went through a lot as a black woman in society during the 1800s. She eventually wrote The Narrative of Sojourner Truth which was an autobiography of her life and what she went through as a slave. Along with this book she also set out to speak about her experiences as a slave. (She wrote her book in 1850.)
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau- They were philosophical allies during the 1800s. They met in Concord, Massachusetts where Thoreau lived. Emerson anonymously wrote Nature which brought about the idea of transcendentalism and that also put out the idea that God would be best found in ones own soul. Emerson eventually even joined that transcendental club which just would speak about ideas like these. They also wrote the very famous book Walden which also dealt with issues of transcendentalism.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton- During the 1800s she became very involved with the Womens Rights Movement to give women their deserved rights. She co-edited the newspaper The Revolution which publicly put out the idea of giving women their rights. She also published an autobiography of herself titled Eighty Years and More. She was also able to complete the first three volumes of the six total volume of The History of Womens Suffrage. She wasnt afraid to speak her mind about what she believed in.
Fredrick Douglass- He was the son of a mother who was a slave and of a white father that he never knew. At a young age he worked as a house servant, which allowed him to learn how to read and write.In 1882 he wrote his autobiography, Life and Times of Fredrick Douglass to show what he went through because many couldnt believe that he was ever a slave. He also began his own anti-slavery newspaper titled The North Star which later came to be known as Fredrick Douglasss Papers from 1847-1860. Through the whole Reconstruction Era he continuously fought for civil rights and for the equal rights women in society.
Mark Twain- Born as Samuel Clemens, he took on the name of Mark Twain when he signed a humorous travel account as he was writing the Virginia Citys Territorial Enterprise. At a camp he heard a story and decided to retell it and called it The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. This story, retold, would make him very famous in 1865. Some of his most known and famous pieces of writing were Tom Sawyer (1876), A Tramp Abroad (1880), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), his autobiography called Life on the Mississippi (1884), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court (1889). These werent the only ones that he wrote but just some of the many fictional stories that he wrote. He usually wrote his stories based on the time period and what was going on in the world around him, but the actual story line was all fictional. I still need to finish the rest of them. There are just too many writers in History to have them all in one post!!!
There's one book that was written that had a HUGE impact on American society. Harriet Beecher Stowewrote Uncle Tom's Cabin which had a theme about slavery. It began to change people's views about slavery. Even Abe Lincoln called her the young lady that wrote the book that caused the war. Now that's BIG!!! Harriet Beecher Stowe was a teacher at the Hartford Female Academy. She was an active abolitionist. Her book showed that Christian love can overcome anything, even something as evil as slavery. Her book was the best selling novel of the 19th century.
Mary Chesnut- She was very famous in the 1800s for keeping a very detailed diary describing the American Civil War. The diary was called The Diary of a Dixie. She wrote in the diary from 1861-1865. When she died she passed on the diary to one of her friends seeing that she had no children. The original diary was published in 1905 but then in 1949 there was an extended version of it that was published. Then there was yet another version of it, done by C. Van Woodward, that was published in 1981 titled Mary Chesnuts Civil War which also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982. Some of the readings of her diary had an important role in the documentary TV series The Civil War.
WEB Dubois- He was a very important writer in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He wrote three major autobiographies of himself. Some of his most famous pieces of writings were The Philadelphia Negro (1896), The Souls of Black Folk (1903), John Brown (1909), Black Reconstruction (1935), Black Folk, Then and Now (1939), and The Negro (1915) which influenced two very famous African scholars. Among these stories he wrote a lot about crime among his race. The Philadelphia Negro was an example of one of the stories that he wrote about crime.
Edith Wharton- She was a very important writer in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She was known for writing her works using dramatic irony. She would base most of her writings, such as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence to talk about her life as an upper class woman of society in New York. She would use humor and empathy to bring out her main points of writing. She wrote about 70 different works during her time as a writer.
Langston Hughes- He is very well known in the early 1900s for his pieces of writings. He would base his writings as his life or the issues surrounding him a black American living in the US which at the time was still very much segregated and racist. He wrote The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1921) which was included in the NAACP journal called The Crisis. He is most known for his poems including poems like Harlem which was among his most famous poems. He also wrote an autobiography of himself as a black American and the issues he faced growing up in a very segregated country.
I'm still not quite done!!! Let me make sure i only post once!
-James Baldwin was an influential writer who wrote about the black experience in order to show white people who black people lived and how they think. He wanted to show to show an average day for a black man, a black woman, and black child. This message was clearly shown in his book Go Tell It O the Mountain. Baldwin also wrote about being Gay. Some of his other books were Everybodys Protest Novel, and Giovannis Room.
-Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible which was a play about the which hunts in 1692. This play was really Millers way of writing about McCarthyism and the red scare in the 1950s.
-Noam Chomsky came up with the theory of generative Grammar along with other linguist theories. He is especially famous for his criticism of the media and politics. Some of his books are The Chomsky Reader, Media Control, and Manufacturing consent.
-John Perkins wrote Confessions of an Economic Hitman which he tells his story of how he was hired by America to go and take political leaders opposed to America policy out of power. He also tells of how America uses other countries to obtain resources that they want.
Angelina Grimke She was the daughter of a slaveholding white judge in Charleston, South Carolina. She, along with her sister, (Sarah Grimke), began to dislike slavery very early in their life. So they became among the first women to speak out against slavery. They eventually began writing about these types of issues. Angelina began to write in the newspaper called The Liberator where she and her sister would speak against slavery. Also, Angelina wrote in support of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. She continued to write against slavery until she died in 1879.
Sonia Sanchez Sonia was a very famous poet during the early 1930s. She is often known to write in association with the Black Arts Movement. She was very much involved with the Civil Rights Movement and would often write about it. She would write many books and plays that had to do with the struggles that black people felt living in such a segregated world. She won many awards for her writings.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez He was a very famous Colombian writer during the late 1920s. He is known for his very different and unique genre of writing. It is described as magic realism genre. Since he was a very good friend of Fidel Castro and very involved in the politics of Colombia he was not allowed into the United States. As a result of that he was continuously seeking asylum in different areas such as Europe, Venezuela, and even Mexico. It was in Mexico that he wrote his most famous pieces of writings such as One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in His Labyrinth, etc.
Isabel Allende She was another very famous Hispanic writer from Peru in the mid 1940s. She was the niece of the Chilean president. The death of her uncle was the inspiration of one of her first pieces of writings, The House of the Spirits. She was also known for writing her stories based on her personal experiences as a woman living in Latin America. The ideal woman in the eyes of the Hispanics was pure, taking the example of the Virgin Mary. She would often write based on her feelings and what she went through being a woman living there. She also deals with politics, history, and like I mentioned before the social issues. But she is known to present them in a very aggressive way so that she can really get her point across
Scott Fitzgerald He was a very well known writer in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He dropped out of school and decided to enlist into the military. He eventually wrote his first novel titled The Romantic Egotist while he was training in the camp. When he got married to Zelda Syre he decided to rename it and change it up a little. The new title of the novel became This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, focusing on the flapper era during the early 1920s. He wrote about four more novels that were based upon what he was going through and how he saw that the world was continuously changing from novel to novel. He would also write about his wifes very wild life style often using direct quotes that she would say. Even though he wrote so much he was never able to make enough for the kind of life that him and Zelda wanted to live. His immense drinking eventually led him to his death at the young age of 44.
F. Scott FitzgeraldBorn Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald on September 24, 1896. He became one of the most influential authors of the "Jazz Age" of the 1920's. His engagement/marriage to Zelda Sayre was rocky from the start. They were engaged in 1919, but the engagement was called off when Fitzgerald's literary career failed to take off. It wasn't until his novel, This Side of Paradise was published in March of 1920 that their engagement was resumed and they were married later that year. It was not until he published The Great Gatsby that Fitzgerald reached his epitomy of fame. He and his wife were active members of the celebrity scene of New York city, frequenting the speakeasies that were abundant during the Prohibition Age. The problems in his married life were often reflected in his novels. Zelda Fitzgerald was even quoted to say that her husband had taken excerpts from her diaries and letters and used them in his writings. The alchoholism that plauged him was also a major influence on the characters he created, and also his wife's mental instability. He recreated his wife over and over again in the flappers that were frequents in all of his stories. Also, the main characters of his novels were often loose reflections of himself. His books became testimonies to the life of the younger generation of the 1920's.
Philis Wheatly- young slave, wrote amazing poetry during the revolutionary period, ex. to his excellency george washington. changed many peoples idea on the intelligence of blacks.
was Philis Wheatly a rare type of poet. I mean, were there many African American poets who contained so much influence over others at this time?
philis weatley actually had to go to england to be published. many americans refused to accept the idea of a learned and talented slave girl. it wasnt untill just before her death, or just after it ( i cant remember) that her peoms were published in america
Nathaniel Hawthorne is mostly known for writing "The Scarlet Letter," which was published in 1850. It takes place in Puritan New England in the seventeenth century.
Henry David Thoreau- transdentalist writer ( this means he belived god, nature and humanity were all connected, this connection was called an over-soul) very outspoken politically, refused to pay taxes b/c he did not support the mexican war. also refused materialism and lived in poverty much of his life.(his book walden is currently competing against moby dick to be our state book)
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888): She was an American novelist who is most known for writing Little Women.Her father was a transcendentalist and her uncle was an abolitionist.
No one did Herman Melville. He wrote Moby Dick and was on a whaling ship that left from Acushnet.
lol I think we're all kindof sick of him and that godforsaken book. lol Excuse my language.
PLUS, I dont think Melville's book had the same impact immediately following its publication that other authors had. In fact, is he even mentioned in our history books? Probably not....concidering the American Pagent is on the same level as Moby Dick. lol
thomas jefferson, the third president of the united states, also the author of the declaration of independence.
joni mitchell, transcendentalist, song writer during the 60's and 70's. Most famous for her song "big yellow taxi", about replacing trees and other things in nature for new innovations.
walt whitman, a poet, humanist, essayist, and journalist. He was a part of the transition between Trancendentalism and Realism, incorporating both views in his works.
robert frost, famous new england poet, who won four pulitzer prizes. Performed some of his poetry at john f. kennedy's innaugural address. he incorporates a lot of nature in his poetry. Personally, he's one of my favorites, that's why i added him.
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) - He was a brilliant writer of fiction and poetry who explored mystery and emotions in stories such as The Raven and Murders in the Rue Morgue. Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story.He was also one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Gwendolyn Brooks- She was an African American poet who usually who usually wrote of the ordinary lives of urban African Americans dealing with racism and poverty.She was the first African American to win Pulitzer Prize (for poetry, 1950). Benjamin Franklin- In 1733, Franklin began to issue the famous Poor Richards Almanac. His popular reputation was built on this.In 1758, he printed Father Abrahams Sermon. He also felt to epitomize the Enlightenment.
Jim Morrison (December 8 1943 - July 3 1971) - A singer, writer, and poet best known for being the front man of the Doors a Rock and Roll band from the 1960s. His death in his Paris home at the age of 27 still remains to be somewhat of a mystery.
Henry David Thoreau- transdentalist writer ( this means he belived god, nature and humanity were all connected, this connection was called an over-soul) very outspoken politically, refused to pay taxes b/c he did not support the mexican war. also refused materialism and lived in poverty much of his life.(his book walden is currently competing against moby dick to be our state book)
Thoreau also wrote the essay Civil Disobedience, in which he explained his views on pacifism and talked about his very brief time in jail for not paying his taxes(since he did not support the Mexican War). In Civil Disobedience he explains that it is okay to protest anything that you see wrong in your government and society as long as it is done in a peaceful way. This essay later inspired Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Also No one mentioned Jack Kerouac- he wrote books such as On the Road and the Dharma Bums, his books are credited for creating the "beat generation" which was big in the 60s and he was considered very important to 1960s thought and poetry. He wrote mostly about the importance of nature, independence, and his Buddhist beliefs, and most of his books were written during drug induced weekends, so sometimes they don't make much sense at all.
We've all heard of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, even Gwendolyn Brooks. But, what about political leaders as writers, such as Madison and Jefferson's Federalist's Federalist Papers, or Abraham Lincoln as a writer. Yeah, Abe Lincoln, 16th president of the US or American Writer ?
The answer is both. Of courseeee both can be an answer. Lincoln's literary works such as his personal "Letter to Mrs. Bixby" expressing his condolences to her for her five sons, most of which lost to the Civil War of the time (1860-1865). However, it was later that he became aware of Mrs. Bixby's false information and the not so noble reasons for sons not being at war. Anyway, it's in this piece, even found on decortative plates and published books today, that Lincoln, as a writer, is known for his literary work. (as well as federal documents he drew up or even speeches he delivered such as his Emancipation Proclamation or Gettysburg Address)
