"Before the 19th century, America doesn´t have much of what we know as traditional literature. The ‚Founding Fathers‘ wrote actively in the 18th century, but produced mostly philosophical or political works. Fiction and poetry didn’t appear until the 19th century.
While they didn't have much written work, their stories and beliefs were handed down generation by generation.
Between the first known writers who belong to the colonial era are Fennimoe James Cooper (The Last of the Mohikans) and Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanac). On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted.
THE NINETHEENTH CENTURY
A variety of writers were busy during this period. Washington Irving wrote humorous short stories and folk tales about Dutch settlers like Rip van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Edgar Allan Poe could be considered the father of horror and crime fiction thanks to stories like The Fall of the House of Usher. Herman Melville, on the other hand, used his real life experience as a sailor to write novels like Moby Dick, about hunt for a white whale. Mark Twain, very famous writer, introduced Americans to what life was like along the Mississippi River with stories like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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A philosophical movement known as Transcendentalism also arose during this period. It was inspired by the works of the essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who stress the individual and the natural world. His follower Henry David Thoreau was more radical – he didn’t believe in organized society and lived alone in a cabin for two years. America’s two greatest 19th-century poets were Walt Whitman, who used free verse and celebrated nature and human-self, and Emily Dickinson, who rarely left her home and wrote short poems about love, death and God. In the beginning of the new century, Jack London became popular with his adventurous books, sometimes based on his experiences from the Klondike gold rush (such as White Fang).
BETWEEN WORLD WARS
Many writers at the time were writing about social problems. Books by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, like The Great Gatsby ,were being read, which described people trying to follow the “American dream” to become wealthy and respected in society. William Faulkner wrote books about the American South such as The Sound and the Fury, which examined how the past, especially the era of slavery, affected the present. He often used long chaotic sentences to show the thoughts and feelings of his characters.
The term “The Lost Generation” is used for authors influenced by World War I. Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway served as a war correspondent in WWI and the Spanish Civil War and wrote novels and short stories about soldiers and other men of action."