About American Writers

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 -1864)
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a novelist and short story writer. Hawthorne’s works have been labelled ‘dark romanticism,’ dominated as they are by cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humankind. His novels and stories, set in a past New England, are versions of historical fiction used as a vehicle to express themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution.
Although his natural inclination was to express himself through the short story form, he is best known for his novels, and particularly his most famous, The Scarlet Letter, a romance in an historical setting – puritan Boston, Massachusetts, in the 17th century. It is the story of the unfortunate Hester Prynne, who gives birth to a child as a result of an affair with a preacher, and struggles to create a new life of repentance. The novel explores the themes of sin, guilt and legalism. D.H. Lawrence wrote that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination.

Hawthorne is ranked among the top American writers. He is admired by other writers, particularly, as a skilful craftsman with an admirable sense of form, which is highly architectural. The structure of his novels, The Scarlet Letter being a striking example, is so tightly integrated that it would be impossible to omit any paragraph without doing damage to the whole. The book’s four characters are inextricably bound together in a complex situation that seems to be insoluble, and the tightly woven plot has a unity of action that rises slowly but inexorably to a highly dramatic climactic scene. In the short stories, too, there is that tight construction. Hawthorne is admired, too for the directness of his writing, and its clarity
Hawthorne’s greatness is due partly to his moral insight. He was deeply concerned with original sin and guilt and the claims of law and conscience. He delved deeply and honestly into life, in which he saw much suffering and conflict but also the redeeming power of love. He is uncompromising in his presentation of those things, firmly and resolutely scrutinising the psychological and moral facts of the human condition. His greatest short stories and The Scarlet Letter are characterised by a depth of psychological and moral insight unequalled by any other American writer.
Hawthorne is also admired for his mastery of allegory and symbolism. His characters’ dilemmas and their response to them express larger generalizations about the problems of human existence. The power and gravity with which he deals with that results in true tragedy.
And now, in the 21st century Hawthorne holds a pre-eminent place in American letters. He was a major influence in the artistic development of such writers as Herman Melville, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mary Jane Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor – members of the so-called Hawthorne School. His focus on the past of the nation, especially the Puritan era, his delving into the social and psychological forces underlying human behavior, his reliance on symbols to convey rich and ambivalent value to his stories and romances, his insistence on finding and understanding the sources of humanity ‘s darker side, and his exploration of such themes as isolation, guilt, concealment, social reform, and redemption not only created a following among aspiring writers but also brought him into the nation’s classrooms, where The Scarlet Letter still holds a firm place.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 –1849)

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. He is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and suspense. He is generally considered the inventor of detective fiction.
Poe’s work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. In addition to his detective stories he is one of the originators of horror and science fiction. He is often credited as the architect of the modern short story. He also focused on the effect of style and structure in a literary work: as such, he has been seen. French Symbolists such as Mallarmé and Rimbaud claimed him as their literary model. Baudelaire translated is works into French. Today, Poe is regarded as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature. He was unusual in that he strived to earn his living through writing alone, which resulted in a life of financial hardship and near poverty.

The work that catapulted Poe onto the New York literary scene in January 1845 was The Raven, a poem that was immediately copied, parodied, and anthologized. He is now one of the most widely read American writers of the 19th century. His appeal extends from young readers who enjoy being terrified by the macabre tales of mystery and imagination, such as The Tell-Tale Heart, to literary critics who appreciate his pioneering analysis in The Philosophy of Composition of how poetry creates its effect on the reader. Poe’s poems, notably The Raven and The Bells, are among the most memorable in the English language, and his stories, among them The Pit and the Pendulum and The Masque of the Red Death, still terrify readers. Poe lives on, not only in American culture but European as well, in drama, film and television, and music.
Adaptations of Poe’s works for film began from the time when films first appeared. And when television emerged that accelerated, so that generations of viewers have watched his stories on screen, and continue to do so. Actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff became typecast as a result of their association with Poe adaptations and those actors can’t be thought of in any other context than horror films. The 2004 release of Hellboy on DVD contained a special 10-minute adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart. More recently, The Cask of Amontillado starring David JM Bielewicz and Frank Tirio, Jr. Directed by Thad Ciechanowski, won an Emmy Award in 2013 and The Raven starring David JM Bielewicz, Dave Pettitt and Nicole Beattie won one in 2015. Adaptations of particularly the more macabre stories appear regularly on television.
Music of the 20th century is infused with the works of Poe. In 1913, Sergei Rachmaninoff set his choral symphony The Bells to a Russian translation of Poe’s poem. The Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara based his 1997 choral fantasy On the Last Frontier on the final two paragraphs of Poe’s novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Other operas based on stories by Poe are Ligeia, a 1994 opera by Augusta Read Thomas, and The Tell-Tale Heart by Bruce Adolphe. Terry Brown produced Hop-Frog, a ballet based on a story by Poe in 2009. The Greek composer Dionysis Boukouvalas has set Poe’s poem To Zante for soprano and piano. The Swedish composer Fredrik Klingwall released nine piano pieces in 2009, each one inspired by one of Poe’s poems in a collection called Works of Woe. There are many more.
Pop music, too, has drawn inspiration from the writings of Poe. Some notable examples are Frankie Laine’s version of Annabel Lee in 1957; Jim Reeves’s recording of Annabel Lee in 1963 for an album of poems called Talkin’ To Your Heart; Bob Dylan’s 1965 song Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues makes reference to Rue Morgue Avenue. When the Beatles compiled images of their heroes for the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, one of the most recognizable faces was that of Poe, in the center of the top row. In 1974 English rock band Queen recorded the song Nevermore, based on The Raven for their second album Queen 2. The tribute album Closed on Account of Rabies was released in 1997, with musicians and actors such as Jeff Buckley and Christopher Walken reading Poe’s works with background music. Britney Spears named her 2001-2002 concert tour Dream Within a Dream, incorporating lines from that poem, and other Poe works, into her show.