Literature
The United States has an exceptionally rich literary history despite its relative youth among the nations of the world. Its basic institutions – its system of government, its constitutional protection of the freedom of speech, its tradition of public education, its extensive networks of newspapers and magazines – all encourage a population of readers and writers. The writers depicted on the following pages are ones you are likely, the ones who occupy central positions in American literature and history.
For the most part, they are writers who examined and analyzed American society in their works, who considered the nation as a whole in addition to their more personal concerns.
Arthur Miller
Booker T. Washington
Edgar Allan Poe
Frederick Douglass
John Updike
Kate Chopin
Langston Hughes
Theodore Dreiser
Toni Morrison
