1. Colonial Literature （1607–1776）

During its growth from a handful of English-speaking people in 1607 and another handful in 1620 to millions of inhabitants in 1776, America produced an impressive body of writing, from Smith and William Bradford early in the period to John Trumbull and Mercy Otis Warren at the time of the Revolution. Despite the abundance of works published during this time, almost all still available, these creations are not widely known. Yet, the era, which constitutes the beginning and early development of American literature in English, produced some writing of lasting aesthetic value as well as an abundance of historically significant works. Not only is this literature important as documentation of early American life, values, accomplishments, and taste, but some of it inspired such later and now canonical nineteenth-century authors asWashington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne （especially Hawthorne）, and Herman Melville, as well as such twentieth-century writers as William Carlos Williams, Stephen Vincent Benét, and Robert Lowell—and even such an English writer as D. H. Lawrence.

Dominant Genres and Literary Forms

With the exception of the novel, colonial America produced literature in all the genres that were then popular in England. The first book published in English in the New World of which a copy is known to exist is The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre （1640）, better known as the Bay Psalm Book .

Beginning with John Smith, colonists wrote histories. Puritans were inspired to compose them because they viewed their experiences in America as reflecting God’s will.

Perhaps surprisingly to readers unfamiliar with colonial American letters, colonists wrote verse prolifically. In time, the example of Alexander Pope not only influenced American poets, but dominated them to the degree that most eighteenth-century American verse is neoclassical in nature. As the century progressed and as revolutionary fervor grew, Americans wrote political poems.

Biographical and autobiographical writing, including journals and diaries, was popular for much the same reason that histories were valued. In the eighteenth century, such writing was modified to create a new genre, the Indian captivity narrative, often, but not exclusively, written by women.

Drama came haltingly to the colonies. Dramatic performances were first presented in the South and were popular there; a few were given in New England, but were banned there in the middle of the eighteenth century. The first professional production of a play composed by an American did not occur until 1767. Several closet plays with a political theme were published in the 1770s, as the Revolution approached.

Belletristic essays came into prominence in the 1720s. As most eighteenth-century verse was influenced by the poetry of one person above all others, Pope, so were the urbane essays composed early in the century similarly influenced, by the sophisticated creations of Joseph Addison, as published in England in The Tatler and The Spectator . As tensions developed between the colonies and the Crown, some Americans wrote polemical essays.

Dominant Writers

Although seemingly most seventeenth-century and many eighteenth-century ministers published sermons, some sermons are more important than others, and some of these are ofparamount significance. One of the most essential and famous sermons of the colonial era was composed and delivered by John Winthrop, who was primarily a political leader. Sometime before landing in America in 1630 （before departing England or at sea aboard the Arbella ） he delivered A Modell of Christian Charity , a sermon in which he presciently depicts America as“a City upon a Hill”, a phrase that has resonated ever since as a statement of American exceptionalism. John Cotton was one of the crucial first-generation Puritans in America. Cotton’s contemporary Thomas Hooker—they arrived in America together in 1633—is generally considered one of the most effective American ministers of the seventeenth century; his sermons, written in a plain style, were so admired that many were published. Solomon Stoddard’s sermons proved important, even though published later, because in some of them he expresses views that challenged the Congregational status quo.

The major biographers of colonial America were Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, and Ebenezer Turell. They all mostly wrote about their own family member such as father, mother, or wife and husband.

Because playwriting came late to America, few Americans wrote plays during the colonial period. Of them, Thomas Godfrey and Mercy Otis Warren are most important.

Beginning in the 1720s, some Americans wrote belletristic essays in the manner of Addison. They were published in the relatively new medium of newspapers. The major essayists were sixteen-year-old Benjamin Franklin （the Dogood papers） and three men who collaborated under the pseudonym Proteus Echo: John Adams （died 1740）, Matthew Adams, and Mather Byles. Other writers composed essays of a political nature. The major political essayists writing before the Declaration of Independence were John Dickinson and, at the beginning of his career, Thomas Paine. Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies （1768） encourages vigilant monitoring of British rule; Paine’s Common Sense （1776） calls for a declaration of independence, which was forthcoming.