Most Important American Authors
Hawthrone, Melville, Whitman, and Twain Produced American Classics
Jan 6, 2009
Who are the most important American authors? While both the definition of and the criteria for “important” are heartily debated, the answer to this question must be:
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Herman Melville
- Walt Whitman
- Mark Twain
These four American authors have shaped and influenced American literature to such a degree that their names must stand out as truly exceptional.
What Is a Literary Classic?
T.S. Eliot once delivered a speech titled “What Is a Classic?” and that question is, at least in part, central to the question posed in this brief essay. While neither Hawthorne, Melville nor Twain (and, most likely, not Whitman either) would have made Eliot’s cut based on his stringent criteria for a universal classic, within the scope of American letters, these four men each wrote what must be considered at least one American classic.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In 1850, Hawthorne altered the course of American literature with the publication of The Scarlet Letter—a novel that turned to the interior, psychological storyline. It is a tale which, perhaps for the first time for a piece of literature of its stature, is set in a distinctly American setting with distinctly American characters. This is not a simple retelling of a European story with the set and costumes changed (as one may view James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales as a retelling of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly novels); The Scarlet Letter marks a critical demarcation in the approach to a literature that, with hindsight, might be called distinctly American.
Herman Melville
A year later, in 1851, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick began with a line that has become synonymous with great literature: “Call me Ishmael.” In its anticipation of modernism firmly rooted in the very soul of American romanticism, Moby Dick explores the meaning of democratization amidst a troubled, uncertain and decidedly harsh world. It is a novel that remained relevant through the calamity of the Civil War and the bravado of the World Wars, and, perhaps most strikingly, it is a story that is nothing short of prophetic in a post September 11th America.
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was his life’s work. First published at Whitman’s own expense in 1855 as a collection of 12 poems, Leaves of Grass continued to grow and change until the final edition of nearly 400 poems published in 1892. In his own words, Whitman called the 1892 edition “at last complete.” He wrote, “after 33 [years] of hackling at it, all times [and] moods of my life, fair weather [and] foul, all parts of the land, and peace [and] war, young [and] old—the wonder to me that I have carried it on to accomplish as essentially as it is, tho' I see well enough its numerous deficiencies [and] faults.” The work, begun in 1847, spans 45 of America’s most formative years and emerges with a voice that is at once journalistic and prophetic. “The United States,” he writes, “are essentially the greatest poem,” and Whitman, with all his flaws, is the greatest advocate for the democratization of the literature of emerging American democracy.
Mark Twain
Mark Twain first published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884. This is a piece of literature distinctly unlike the three aforementioned texts and most like the modern American novel with which the contemporary reader will be familiar. The complexity of its symbolism, the convoluted approach toward societal norms (especially racism) and its distinct regionalism laid the foundation upon which the modern canon of American literature has been built. As Ernest Hemingway emphatically stated, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
