Product of:
Cooperstown, New York.
Earned a Living as a:
Gentleman farmer.
High-School Reading List:
Probably none; The Leatherstocking Tales, i.e., The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841) are considered grade-school material.
College Reading List:
Social criticism, such as Notions of the Americans (1828), a defense of America against the sniping of foreign visitors; or “Letter to his Countrymen” (1834), a diatribe written in response to bad reviews of his latest novel.
What You Were Supposed to Have Learned in High Schooclass="underline"
That Cooper was America’s first successful novelist and that Natty Bumppo was one of the all-time most popular characters in world literature. Also that The Leatherstocking Tales portrayed the conflicting values of the vanishing wilderness and encroaching civilization.
What You Didn’t Find Out Until College:
That the closest Cooper ever got to the vanishing wilderness was Scarsdale, and that, in his day, he was considered an insufferable snob, a reactionary, a grouch, and a troublemaker known for defending slavery and opposing suffrage for everyone but male landowners. That eventually, everyone decided the writing in The Leatherstocking Tales was abominable, but that during the 1920s Cooper’s social criticism began to seem important and his thinking pretty much representative of American conservatism. RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)
Product of:
Concord, Massachusetts.
Earned a Living as a:
Unitarian minister, lecturer.
High-School Reading List:
A few passages from Nature (1836), Emerson’s paean to individualism, and a couple of the Essays (1841), one of which was undoubtedly the early, optimistic “Self-Reliance.” If you were spending a few days on Transcendentalism, you probably also had to read “The Over-Soul.” If, on the other hand, your English teacher swung toward an essay like “The Poet,” it was, no doubt, accompanied by a snatch of Emersonian verse— most likely “Brahma” or “Days.” (You already knew Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” from grade-school history lessons, although you probably didn’t know who wrote it.)
College Reading List:
Essays and more essays, including “Experience,” a tough one. Also the lecture “The American Scholar,” in which Emerson called for a proper American literature, freed from European domination.
What You Were Supposed to Have Learned in High Schooclass="underline"
That Emerson was the most important figure of the Transcendentalist movement, whatever that was, the friend and benefactor of Thoreau, and a legend in his own time; also, that he was a great thinker, a staunch individualist, an unshakable optimist, and a first-class human being, even if you wouldn’t have wanted to know him yourself.
What You Didn’t Find Out Until College:
That you’d probably be a better person if you had known him yourself and that almost any one of his essays could see you through an identity crisis, if not a nervous breakdown. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hawthorne’s house, Concord, Massachusetts
Product of:
Salem and Concord, Massachusetts.
Earned a Living as a:
Writer, surveyor, American consul in Liverpool.
High-School Reading List:
The Scarlet Letter (1850) or The House of the Seven Gables (1851); plus one or two tales, among which was probably “Young Goodman Brown” (1846) because your teacher hoped a story about witchcraft would hold your attention long enough to get you through it.
College Reading List:
None, since you were expected to have done the reading back in high school. One possible exception: The Blithedale Romance (1852) if your prof was into Brook Farm and the Transcendentalists; another: The Marble Faun (1860) for its explicit fall-of-man philosophizing.
What You Were Supposed to Have Learned in High Schooclass="underline"
What the letter A embroidered on someone’s dress means.
What You Didn’t Find Out Until College:
That Hawthorne marked a turning point in American morality and a break from our Puritan past, despite the fact that he, like his ancestors, never stopped obsessing about sin and guilt. Also, that he’s considered something of an underachiever. EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)
Edgar Allan Poe’s cottage, New York City
Product of:
Richmond, Virginia; New York City; Baltimore, Maryland.
Earned a Living as a:
Hack journalist and reviewer.
High-School Reading List:
“The Raven” (1845), “Ulalume” (1847), “Annabel Lee” (1848), and a few other poems, probably read aloud in class; a detective story: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) or “The Purloined Letter” (1845), either of which you could skip if you’d seen the movie; one or two of the supernatural-death stories, say, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) or “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), either of which you could skip if you’d seen the movie; a couple of the psychotic-murderer stories, e.g., “The Tell-Tale Heart” or “The Black Cat” (both 1843), either of which you could skip if you’d seen the movie; and a pure Poe horror number like “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), which you could skip if you’d seen the movie. Sorry, but as far as we know, they still haven’t made a movie of “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846), although somebody once wrote to us, claiming to have seen it.
College Reading List:
None; remedial reading only, unless you chose to write your dissertation on “The Gothic Element in American Fiction.”
What You Were Supposed to Have Learned in High Schooclass="underline"
That Poe invented the detective story and formulated the short story more or less as we know it. That maybe poetry wasn’t so bad, after all. Also, that Poe was a poverty-stricken alcoholic who did drugs and who married his thirteen-year-old cousin, just like Jerry Lee Lewis did.
What You Didn’t Find Out Until College:
That once you’re over seventeen, you don’t ever admit to liking Poe’s poetry, except maybe to your closest friend who’s a math major; that while Poe seemed puerile to American critics, he was a cult hero to European writers from Baudelaire to Shaw; and that, in spite of his subject matter, Poe still gets credit—even in America— for being a great technician. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896)
Product of:
Litchfield and Hartford, Connecticut; Cincinnati, Ohio; Brunswick, Maine.
Earned a Living as a:
Housewife.
High-School Reading List:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851–1852).
Harriet Beecher Stowe
College Reading List:
The Pearl of Orr’s Island (1862) and Old Town Folks (1869), if your professor was determined to make a case for Stowe as a novelist. Both are considered superior to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.