A Timeline of
American Literature & History
Prepared by Skylar H. Burris

This annotated timeline provides an organized overview of the literature and history of The United States of America (as well as some world events affecting American literature).   Occasionally, you will see  a blank line ___ instead of a date.  This means that the exact date is unknown or the event/works span several years. The placement of these works and events, however, will give you a general idea of where they fall on the historical timeline. This timeline is still under development and will be expanded in the future. Separate timelines are available for English and World Literature.

1492    Columbus discovers America

1600    Charter of the East India Company

1612    Anne Bradstreet is born

1615    Sir Walter Raleigh, The History of the World

1620    Mayflower arrives in New World

____    Edward Taylor, "Upon a Spider Catching a Fly" and "Huswifery"

1756    The Seven Years' War (French and Indian Wars) begins

1763    Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years War

1766    Stamp Act Repealed in the colonies

1770    Boston Massacre

1773    Boston Tea Party

1775    American Revolution Begins

1776    Declaration of Independence

1781    British Army surrenders at Yorktown

1783    Peace of Paris ends Revolutionary War     

1789    George Washington becomes the first President
            The French Revolution begins

1791    Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

1797    John Adams President

1801    Thomas Jefferson President

1809    James Madison President

1817    James Monroe President

1824    Monroe Doctrine

1825    John Quincy Adams President

1827    Edgar Allan Poe publishes his pamphlet Tamerlane

1829    Andrew Jackson President

1837    Martin Van Buren President

1841    William H. Harrison President and dies
            John Tyler President

1845    James Polk President

1849    Zachary Taylor President

1850    Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
            Millard Filmore President

1851    Herman Melville, Moby Dick (also author of Billy Budd, Sailor)

1853    Franklin Pierce President

1855    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Song of Hiawatha"
            Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

1857    James Buchanan President

1861    Abraham Lincoln President
            American Civil War
            John Greenleaf Whittier, "In Wartime and Other Poems"

1862    Henry David Thoreau dies

1865    Abraham Lincoln assassinated, Andrew Johnson President

1869    Ulysses S. Grant President

1877    Rutherhord B. Hayes President

1881    James A. Garfield President and assassinated
            Grover Cleveland President

1882    Ralph Waldo Emerson dies

1889    Benjamin Harrison President

1893    Grover Cleveland President

1897    William McKinley President

1901    McKinley assassinated and Theodore Roosevelt President

1903    Henry James, The Ambassadors

1909    William H. Taft President

1910    Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

1913    Woodrow Wilson President

1914    World War I

1915    Robert Frost, North of Boston

1916    Jack London, author of Call of the Wild, dies at age 40

1919    Sherwood Anderson, Weisnberg, Ohio

1920    Sinclair Lewis, Babbit

1921    Warren G. Harding President
            Edwin Arlington Robinson wins the Pulitzer for "Collected Poems"
            Marrianne Moore Poems

1922    John Crowe Ransom establishes the Fugitive Group
            T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland

1923    Calvin Coolidge President

1925    Theodore Drieser, An American Tragedy

1926    Hart Crane, White Buildings

1929    Herbert Hoover President

1930    Great Depression

1933    Franklin Roosevelt President

1934    William Carlos Williams, Collected Poems

1936    Spanish Civil War Begins
            Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom

1939    World War II

____    Robinson Jeffers, "Shine, perishing republic"
            Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Renascence"
            Wallace Stevens, "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
            Conrad Aiken, "Annihilation"
            Archibald Macleish, "The End of the World"   

1944    Robert Lowell, Land of Unlikeness

1945    Harry S. Truman President
            Herman Wouk, The Winds of War

1946     Robert Penn Warren, All the Kings Men

1950     Korean Conflict Begins

1951     Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill"

1952     Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

1953     Dwight D. Eisenhower President
             Korean Conflict Ends

1961     John F. Kennedy President
             Bob Dylan releases his first album

1963     Kennedy assassinated, Lyndon Johnson President
             Advisors sent to Vietnam

1969     Richard Nixon President
            Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse Five

1970     Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

1974     Gerald Ford President
             Stephen King, Carrie

1976     American Troops Withdrawl from Vietnam

1977     James Carter President

1981     Ronald Reagan President

1989     George Bush President

____     Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street

1992    William Jefferson Clinton President

2000    George W. Bush President

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Last Updated 01/09/05 06:34 AM