William Cullen Bryant

---

to nature, who survived on his instincts, honesty and common sense. 
William Cullen Bryant
(1794-1878) became recognized as the finest American 
poet. His most famous poem “
Thanatopsis
” is a meditation on the meaning of death. 
He was also one of the most influential newspaper editors of his time and played a 
leading role in public affairs for almost 50 years. 
In 1828, 
Noah Webster
published an American dictionary, defining what made 
the English language spoken in America different from British English. The election of 
frontier hero Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1829 symbolized to many the 
achievement of a real democracy, and political cartoons and satiric humor blossomed in 
newspapers. The spread of public schools through the states ensured a large reading 
public. Educator 
William Holmes McGuffey
’s (1800-1873) publishing of a series of 
primers, which were widely used in those schools, ensured that the general population 
shared a common store of literary material – poems, moralistic tales and quotations 
from literature. After 1836, more than 120 million copies of the “McGuffey Readers” 
were printed, and they influenced generations of Americans. 
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD (1820-1860) 
Questions: 
1. Transcendentalism: R.W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau 
2. The Boston Brahmins: H.W. Longfellow 
3. Individuals: E.A. Poe, N. Hawthorne, H. Melville, W. Whitman, E. Dickinson 
The Romantic Movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to 
England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year of 1820. The Romantic 
spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: it stressed individualism, 
affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its 
aesthetic and ethical values. So, American Romanticism was defined by five “
I’s
”: 
inspiration, innocence, intuition, imagination, 
and
 inner experience. 
It lasted from 1828 
to 1895, the glory years being 1850-1855.