O-T Famous American Literature
Eugene O’Neill, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Mark Twain…
Picking up from H-N Famous American Literature, there are some writers and works which have either been historically influential or become embedded into common consciousness. Working through the alphabet from O-T, these writers or their works have influenced the formation of a nation’s ideals, dreams, and attitudes.
O – Eugene O’Neill
Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) contributed to introducing “realism” to American drama, writing only one well-known comedy, Ah, Wilderness (1933). He became Noble Laureate in 1936, not producing anything else until The Iceman Cometh (1946).
P – Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is best known as a poet and short story writer of the American Romantic Movement. Responsible for many dark tales of mystery, he is often considered the inventor of detective-fiction. The macabre present in many of his works has also led to his contributing to the development of the genre of science fiction, but he remains perhaps best known for his last completed poem, Annabel Lee (1849).
Q – Questioning Social Structure in The Crucible by Arthur Miller and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Although like much historical fiction, both works were written as a means of reflection on parallels to more modern times, The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and The Crucible (1953) by Arthur Miller (1915-2005) are both set against the backdrop of the seventeenth century settlements of Puritan Massachusetts, exhibiting some of the perceptions of that era in American history.
R – The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Robert Frost (1874-1963) won four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, and he is generally praised for his use of colloquial speech and depictions of rural life as a means of examining social and philosophical issues. The Road Not Taken (1916) remains his most often quoted work.
S – John Steinbeck
Most remembered for writing The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and The Pearl (1947), John Steinbeck (1902-1968), unlike many noted writers of the United States, was a native of the West Coast. He often drew upon his memories and life in California.
T – Mark Twain
Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain (1835-1910) was an immensely popular author and humorist. Perhaps, the author most often associated with American literature, his novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) has come to be considered to epitomize boyhood existence, and some call Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) the first “Great American Novel.” Although Twain, like Henry James, placed emphasis on realism, he also wrote more fanciful historical fiction novels such as The Prince and the Pauper (1881) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).
U-Z Guide to Famous American Literature
The guide of writers and their works continues with U-Z Famous American Literature. From novelists such as Edith Wharton who reflected society to novelists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe who actively influenced change, novels such as those by F.Scott Fitzgerald came to capture the generation of an age.
The West Coast of John Steinbeck
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