Classic American literature

The classic American literature brought literature among the members of the
important literatures of the world. The first author is Washington Irving,
essayist, storywriter, historian and biographer. He wrote a large biography
of George Washington, history of New York. One of his well-known books is The
Sketch Book.

James Fenimore Cooper

was brought up in a pioneer settlement, with
plenty of time to be with American Indians and talk to them. He became a widely
read author of novels of heroism and adventure – mainly the Leather-Stockinks
Tale – The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The
Pathfinder, The Pioneers and The Prairie.
The chief character of the series is Natty Bumppo (= Deerslayer, Hawkeye,
Pathfinder, Leather-Stocking. In him Cooper idealized the typical frontiersman
of the early pioneering epoch.

Well-known author is Edgar Allan Poe, he was born in Boston, spent
some time in England, and then he returned to America and studied at the
University of Virginia for a year. He tried to write poetry but wasn?t
successful until 1845 when he published The Raven. He was a journalist
and edited several American magazines in which he published his literary
criticism and some short stories. He invented a new literary form the
detective story. He wrote The Gold Bug, The Murders in the
Rue Morgue, and The Purloined Letter. The Decedent into
the Maelstrom, describing the fisherman who escapes the whirlpool, The Fall of
the House of Usher, and The Pit and the Pendulum, represent the tales of terror,
a hangover from Gothicism. His The Masque of the Red Death is
grotesque and terrible.

Mark Twain

is one of the greatest US authors. He comes from the South and
he worked as a steamboat on the Mississippi river. ?Mark twain? is a river-man?s
phrase meaning two-fathoms-deep. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He
became famous as humorist and story-taller. His novel Gilded Age
gave the name to the whole period after the Civil War. This book is bitter
satire in one period of the get-rich-quick years in the second half of the 19^th
century. His best books are based on his own experience along Mississippi – The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
These books describe the adventures of boyhood. Tom is portrait of a frontier
boy. Huck is a free boy. Twains other works are The Celebrated
Jumping Frog, The Innocents Abroad, The Prince and
the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur?s Court,
Life on the Mississippi.

Jack London

became very popular due to describing adventurous life at the
time of the gold rush, it is in his work The Call of the Wild. Martin
Eden is a novel about a man who wants to be successful,
achieve education and get himself to higher and better society. At the end he
commit a suicide. This novel is autobiographical. His other works are The
White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, The Son of the Wolf.

Herman Melville

was the greatest symbolist; he sailed on seas for many
years. His experiences at sea were the basis for almost all his novel. The most
famous novel is Moby-Dick, the symbolic story of captain Ahab, a free
man. Striving against his own fate, for which Moby-Dick – the white whale –
means evil. The book culminates in the tension of the three-day hunt of Moby-Dick
which ends disaster – Captain Ahab, who wants to fight Moby-Dick alone, is
pinned to whale?s body by his own harpoon.