American writers

American writers
This list of American writers is alphabetically ordered by period. The term writers is broadly defined to include philosophers, scientists, cookbook writers, critics, journalists, sociologists, historians, and even explorers, as well as poets and novelists. This list is limited, however, to those writers springing from the European tradition, including the work of African American writers who were schooled in the United States and others who were not by definition U.S. citizens but who wrote works of importance to American culture or American literature. It should also be noted that writers who overlap two periods are usually listed within the period that they wrote their most representative works.
Colonial era

• 
  William Bradford
  
• 
  Anne Bradstreet
  
• 
  Thomas Harriot
  
• 
  Increase Mather
  
• 
  Cotton Mather
  
• 
  Thomas Morton
  
• 
  Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
  
• 
  William Penn
  
• 
  Samuel Sewall
  
• 
  John Smith
  
• 
  Edward Taylor
  
• 
  Nathaniel Ward
  
• 
  Michael Wigglesworth
  
• 
  Roger Williams
  
• 
  John Winthrop
  

The 18th century

• 
  Abigail Adams
  
• 
  Hannah Adams
  
• 
  John Adams
  
• 
  Conrad Beissel
  
• 
  Charles Brockden Brown
  
• 
  William Hill Brown
  
• 
  William Byrd
  
• 
  Jonathan Carver
  
• 
  Michel-Guillaume-Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur
  
• 
  Joseph Dennie
  
• 
  John Dickinson
  
• 
  Joseph Rodman Drake
  
• 
  Timothy Dwight
  
• 
  Jonathan Edwards
  
• 
  Olaudah Equiano
  
• 
  Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson
  
• 
  Hannah Webster Foster
  
• 
  Benjamin Franklin
  
• 
  Philip Freneau
  
• 
  Samuel Griswold Goodrich
  
• 
  Alexander Hamilton
  
• 
  Samuel Hopkins
  
• 
  Thomas Jefferson
  
• 
  Sarah Kemble Knight
  
• 
  Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton
  
• 
  Judith Sargent Stevens Murray
  
• 
  Thomas Paine
  
• 
  Edward Taylor
  
• 
  Lucy Terry
  
• 
  John Trumbull
  
• 
  Royall Tyler
  
• 
  Mercy Otis Warren
  
• 
  Phillis Wheatley
  
• 
  John Woolman
  

encomium, a prose or poetic work in which a person, thing, or abstract idea is glorified. Originally an encomium was a Greek choral song honouring the hero of the Olympic Games and sung at the victory celebration at the end of the Games. The Greek writers Simonides of Ceos and Pindar wrote some of the earliest of these original encomia. The term later took on the broader meaning of any composition of a laudatory nature. Verse forms of the encomium include the epinicion and the ode. The word is from the Greek enkṓmion, “laudatory ode” or “panegyric.”
débat, a type of literary composition popular especially in medieval times in which two or more usually allegorical characters discuss or debate some subject, most often a question of love, morality, or politics, and then refer the question to a judge. A tenson is a specific type of débat. A débat may also be an extended discussion, debate, or philosophical argument between two characters in a work of literature. George Bernard Shaw incorporated such discussions into several of his plays, including Major Barbara. The word is of French origin and means, literally, “a debate or altercation.”