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122-747: American Writers is a work of literary criticism by American writer and critic John Neal . Published by Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in five installments between September 1824 and February 1825, it is recognized by scholars as the first history of American literature and the first substantial work of criticism concerning US authors. It is Neal's longest critical work and at least 120 authors are covered, based entirely on Neal's memory. With no notes or books for reference, Neal made multiple factually inaccurate claims and provided coverage of many authors that modern scholars criticize as disproportionate to their role in American literature. Scholars nevertheless praise

244-718: A "blazing rocket-battery" he could turn to fire upon the readership of "swarming whipper-snappers" in Great Britain. Thinking highly of his own abilities, he was confident he would fast become a leading literary figure in London. Neal's resources were running low after three months in England with no income. Capitalizing on Europeans' interest in US politics sparked by recent news of the Monroe Doctrine , he wrote an article on

366-487: A book". Neal summed him up as "a man of sober talent—nothing more." Seven decades later, Mark Twain struck a very similar tone in his own essay, " Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses ". Neal also included a discussion of John Dunn Hunter , which was based to a degree on their time in the same London boarding house . That section is a largely accurate prediction of Hunter's future reputation as an untrustworthy imposter and filibuster . Neal's critique of William Cullen Bryant

488-403: A broader readership of minimally educated book buyers, thereby intending to guarantee the existence of an American national literature by ensuring its economic viability. Starting in the late 1820s, Neal shifted his focus from nationalism to regionalism to challenge the rise of Jacksonian populism in the US by showcasing and contrasting coexisting regional and multicultural differences within

610-619: A broken gallop. I wheeled, made a dead set at the son-of-a-bitch in my rear, unhorsed him, and actually broke through the line." — John Neal, Seventy-Six , 1823 William Blackwood Blackwood was born in Edinburgh on 20 November 1776. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a firm of booksellers in Edinburgh, and he followed his calling also in Glasgow and London for several years. Returning to Edinburgh in 1804, he opened

732-470: A direct influence on Whitman, according to literature scholar Joseph Jay Rubin. Neal's pleas not to stifle US literature by fluffing undeserving American writers likely influenced Poe's critical essays, which contained similar language. Neal's criticism of Harriet Vaughan Cheney 's A Peep at the Pilgrims in 1636 (1824) contended the book did a great job of presenting dry history while failing to communicate

854-500: A dozen [American] authors; and of these, only Washington Irving had received more than enough to pay for the salt in his porridge." Neal was nevertheless inspired by Pierpont's financial success with his poem The Airs of Palestine (1816) and encouraged by the reception of his initial submissions to The Portico . He resolved that "there was nothing left for me but authorship, or starvation, if I persisted in my plan of studying law". Composing his first and only bound volume of poetry

976-570: A dry goods shop in Boston and moved to the larger city. In Boston, Neal established a partnership with John Pierpont and Pierpont's brother in-law, whereby they exploited supply chain constrictions caused by the War of 1812 to make quick profits smuggling contraband British dry goods between Boston, New York City, and Baltimore . They established stores in Boston, Baltimore, and Charleston before

1098-745: A feud between the two men that continued for years. Speaking for the minority of US literary figures who favored Neal's piece in Blackwood's , Sumner Lincoln Fairfield in the New York Literary Gazette in April 1826 said Neal "has really and truly done much service to his country   ...; his treatment in America was cruel and abominable". Neal left England and returned to his hometown of Portland, Maine , in July 1827, probably expecting

1220-408: A few months on the assumption that "if people gave any thing [ sic ] for books here, they would not be able to starve me, since I could live upon air, and write faster than any man that ever lived." His financial situation had become desperate when William Blackwood asked Neal in April 1824 to become a regular contributor to Blackwood's Magazine . For the next year and a half, Neal

1342-646: A fistfight. In defiance, he decided to stay in Portland, where he lived until his death forty-nine years later. The first postmortem republication of a substantial work by Neal was 1937, when Fred Lewis Pattee collected American Writers for the first time into one publication. That 1937 edition remains the most accessible of Neal's literary productions . After eight years in Baltimore, John Neal sailed to England in late 1823. He pursued three primary goals: supersede Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper as

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1464-472: A forerunner of the American Renaissance . As one of the first men to advocate women's rights in the US and the first American lecturer on the issue, for over fifty years he supported female writers and organizers, affirmed intellectual equality between men and women, fought coverture laws against women's economic rights, and demanded suffrage , equal pay, and better education for women. He was

1586-509: A lecturer in 1829, reaching the height of his influence in the women's rights movement in 1843 when he was delivering speeches before large crowds in New York City and reaching wider audiences through the press. This period of juggling literary, activist, athletic, legal, artistic, social, and business pursuits was captured by Neal's law apprentice James Brooks in 1833: Neal was   ... a boxing-master, and fencing-master too, and as

1708-493: A letter around the same time. The protagonist of Neal's 1830 novel Authorship was named Carter Holmes, which the book called a "fictitious name" connected to "Blackwood". American Writers comprises about 50,000 words over 80 magazine pages. Literature scholars Alfred Fiorelli, Benjamin Lease, and Hans-Joachim Lang counted 120 names among the authors covered by Neal. Both biographer Irving T. Richards and scholar Alberta Fabris put

1830-685: A man in his early twenties who was smoking on a non-smoking streetcar. John Neal died on June 20, 1876, and was buried in the Neal family plot in Portland's Western Cemetery . Neal's body of literary work spans almost sixty years from the end of the War of 1812 to a decade following the Civil War , though he achieved his major literary accomplishments between 1817 and 1835. His writing both reflects and challenges shifting American ways of life over those years. He started his career as an American reading public

1952-431: A modern audience. Fleischmann called it "an unprecedented success" in terms of educating British readership. Pattee acknowledged Neal's misinformation and unfair attacks, but otherwise judged the work as "sound criticism" and praised the staying power of Neal's critiques, saying, "his critical judgments have held. Where he condemned, Time has almost without exception condemned also." Literature scholar Alexander Cowie issued

2074-580: A more interesting version of Neal's ability to produce a series of sketches of American figures, which is why Pattee decided to include the excerpt. This was the first republication of a substantial work by Neal since his death. It was also the first of a series in the twentieth century that included Observations on American Art: Selections from the Writings of John Neal in 1943, "Critical Essays and Stories by John Neal" in 1962, Rachel Dyer in 1964, Seventy-Six in 1971, and The Genius of John Neal in 1978,

2196-537: A printer's devil came in, crying "copy, more copy," he would race with a huge swan's quill, full gallop, over sheets of paper as with a steam-pen, and off went one page, and off went another, and then a lesson in boxing, the thump of glove to glove, then the mask, and the stamp of the sandal, and the ringing of the foils. In 1828, Neal married his second cousin Eleanor Hall and together they had five children between 1829 and 1847. The couple raised their children in

2318-580: A proud and ambitious young man who viewed reliance on his own talents and resources as the key to his recovery and future success. Neal's time in Baltimore between his business failure in 1816 and his departure for London in 1823 was the busiest period of his life as he juggled overlapping careers in editorship, journalism, poetry, novels, law study, and later, law practice. During this period he taught himself to read and write in eleven languages, published seven books, read law for four years, completed an independent course of law study in eighteen months that

2440-472: A regular contributor, finding himself "warmly welcomed and handsomely paid", according to Sears. As the magazine's first major American contributor, Neal authored at least one article for every issue between May 1824 and February 1825. Neal's presence in its pages was substantial enough that literary historian Fred Lewis Pattee called it a "complete surrender" on the part of " Blackwood's to the swashbuckling young American". Neal later wrote that he traveled to

2562-659: A shop in South Bridge Street for the sale of old, rare and curious books. He undertook the Scottish agency for John Murray and other London publishers, and gradually drifted into publishing on his own account, moving in 1816 to Princes Street. On 1 April 1817, the first number of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine was published, which on its seventh number became Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine . " Maga ", as this magazine soon came to be called,

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2684-456: A similarly balanced assessment, concluding that American Writers is "generally rich in acute critical perceptions". This was also echoed by Sears, Lease, and the editors of a 21st-century collection of Blackwood's articles, who pointed to "caustic one-liners or generic praise" Neal used for works with which he was less familiar but "cogent, authoritative and lucid" comments for his favorite works. An example of Neal's misinformation and unfairness

2806-483: A single exception." Fred Lewis Pattee corroborated this statement seventy years after Neal's death: "Where he condemned, time has almost without exception condemned also." As an American literary nationalist, he called for "faithful representations of native character" in literature that utilize the "abundant and hidden sources of fertility   ... in the northern, as well as the southern Americas". His American Writers essay series in Blackwood's Magazine (1824)

2928-523: A single piece on an American topic from June 1822 until Neal's first piece in May 1824. Neal felt he was a good fit for Blackwood's , having sought it out as "the cleverest, the sauciest, and most unprincipled of our calumniators", he later wrote. Cairns agreed, writing: "Neal's slashing style and the somewhat sensational nature of his utterances fitted well with the manner of Blackwood's ". Blackwood seemed to enjoy Neal's style and wanted it in his magazine. Neal

3050-470: A six-volume 2016 academic collection of Blackwood's articles called it "the most brilliant, troubling, acerbic and imaginative periodical of the post-Napoleonic age". Literature scholar Fritz Fleischmann described the magazine as subscribing to an "aesthetic belief in original thoughts expressed in bold and forceful language". The editor of a 1959 academic Blackwood's collection used the words "riotous" and "blackguardly". The magazine did not, however, publish

3172-815: A source of income. James Neal died in 1832 and Stephen Neal in 1836, but the second inheritance was held up until 1858 in a legal battle involving Stephen's daughter, suffragist Lydia Neal Dennett . In 1845 he became the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company 's first agent in Maine, earning enough in commissions that he decided to retire from the lecture circuit, law practice, and most writing projects. Neal began developing and managing local real estate, operating multiple granite quarries, developing railroad connections to Portland, and investing in land speculation in Cairo, Illinois . He led

3294-422: A time he felt like a man without a country". He was accosted on the street by locals waiting for him on the stoop of a tavern. The confrontation led to a fistfight in which the group's leader left with a bloody nose. Neal also found broadsides posted throughout the city sarcastically proclaiming his writing in London and Baltimore had driven him insane and he was recovering with help from an "African Physician", who

3416-447: Is a " gothic tapestry" of "superstition, supernatural suggestions, brutality, sensuality, colossal hatred, delirium, rape, insanity, murder   ... incest and cannibalism". By "elevating emotional effect over coherence, the novel excites its readers to death." It challenged the national narrative of American Indians' foreordained disappearance in the face of White Americans' territorial expansion and collapsed racial boundaries between

3538-479: Is considered an author without a masterpiece, though his short stories are his highest literary achievements and ranked with the best of his age. Rachel Dyer is considered his best novel, "Otter-Bag, the Oneida Chief" and "David Whicher" his best tales, and The Yankee his most influential periodical. His "Rights of Women" speech (1843) at the peak of his influence as a feminist had a considerable impact on

3660-456: Is not to be bilked of his fee, a thimble-full of newspaper notoriety". Called "the inventor of the American short story", Neal's tales are "his highest literary achievement". He published an average of one per year between 1828 and 1846, helping to shape the relatively new short story genre, particularly early children's literature. Considered his best short stories, "Otter-Bag, the Oneida Chief" (1829) and "David Whicher" (1832) "overshadow

3782-631: Is noteworthy as the first work of fiction to utilize psychotherapy . "The Old Pussy-Cat and the Two Little Pussy-Cats" and "The Life and Adventures of Tom Pop" (1835) are both considered pioneering works of children's literature . Like his magazine essays and lectures, Neal's stories challenged American socio-political phenomena that grew in the period leading up to and including Andrew Jackson 's terms as US president (1829–1837): manifest destiny , empire building, Indian removal , consolidation of federal power, racialized citizenship, and

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3904-449: Is now worshipped under the name of classical English", which was "the deadest language I ever met with or heard of". Neal's voice was one of many following the War of 1812 calling for an American literary nationalism , but Neal felt his colleagues' work relied too much on British conventions. By contrast, he felt that "to succeed   ..., I must be unlike all that have gone before me" and issue "another Declaration of Independence, in

4026-446: Is possible to read through." He nevertheless judged Seventy-Six to be "one of the best romances of the age". Logan "is full of power—eloquence—poetry—instinct" but still "so outrageously overdone, that no-body can read it through." Lease and Cairns considered Neal's coverage of Cooper to be disproportionately brief. In it, he dismissed Cooper's female characters as "nice, tidy, pretty—behaved women, who   ... talk very much like

4148-536: Is the earliest written history of American literature, and was reprinted as a collection in 1937. Neal dismissed almost all of the 120 authors he critiqued in that series as derivative of their British predecessors. John Neal used his role as critic, particularly in the pages of his magazine The Yankee , to draw attention to newer writers in whose work he saw promise. John Greenleaf Whittier , Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow all received their first "substantial sponsorship or praise" in

4270-628: The American Writers series was Neal's most noteworthy contribution to the magazine. Blackwood provided the platform for Neal's earliest written works on gender and women's rights and published Brother Jonathan , but a back-and-forth over manuscript revisions in autumn 1825 soured the relationship and Neal was once again without a source of income. After a short time earning much less money writing articles for other British periodicals, thirty-two year-old John Neal met seventy-seven year-old utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham through

4392-472: The Quarterly Review ' s March 1825 review of Irving was presumably copied from Blackwood's , rather than based on an original interpretation. Being published in a respected journal likely convinced British readers of American Writers ' s validity. The British Critic in April 1826 said Neal's novels were too extreme, but praised American Writers , saying it "shows him to be well worth

4514-644: The Cult of Domesticity . "David Whicher" challenged a body of popular literature that converged in the 1820s around a "divisive and destructive insistence on frontiersman and the Indian as implacable enemies". "Idiosyncrasies" is a "manifesto for human rights" in the face of "hegemonic patriarchalism". His stories in this period also used humor and satire to address social and political phenomena, most notably "Courtship" (1829), "The Utilitarian" (1830), "The Young Phrenologist" (1836), "Animal Magnetism" (1839), and "The Ins and

4636-481: The European Review ' s inaugural (June 1824) issue, and editor Alexander Walker paid more than Blackwood, but Walker also rejected all of Neal's subsequent submissions after learning Neal was American. Neal sent five more articles to Blackwood with a letter explaining his willingness to cover any manner of topics; Blackwood rejected them all. His sixth submission to Blackwood was accepted, and Neal became

4758-618: The London Debating Societies . In late 1825 Bentham offered him rooms at his "Hermitage" and a position as his personal secretary. Neal spent the next year and a half writing for Bentham's Westminster Review . In spring 1827, Bentham financed Neal's return to the US. He left the UK having caught the attention of the British literary elite, published the novel he brought with him, and "succeeded to perfection" in educating

4880-544: The Society of Friends after his participation in a street brawl. In reaction to insults against prominent lawyer William Pinkney published in Randolph just after Pinkney died, his son Edward Coote Pinkney challenged Neal to a duel. Having established himself six years earlier as an outspoken opponent of dueling, Neal refused and the two engaged in a battle of printed words in the fall of that year. Neal became "weary of

5002-402: The "father of American subversive fiction". Generally regarded as a failure, the book shows that "the gulf between Neal's prophetic vision of a native literature and his own capacity to fulfill that vision is painfully apparent". The productivity of Neal's Baltimore days is "hard to believe—until one reads the novels" and notices the haste with which they were written. Logan, a Family History

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5124-545: The 1810s and 1870s in the United States and Great Britain, championing American literary nationalism and regionalism in their earliest stages. Neal advanced the development of American art , fought for women's rights , advocated the end of slavery and racial prejudice, and helped establish the American gymnastics movement . The first American author to use natural diction and a pioneer of colloquialism , Neal

5246-630: The 1820s: to supplant Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper as the leading American literary voice, to bring about a new distinctly American literary style, and to reverse the British literary establishment's disdain for American writers. He followed Irving's precedent of using temporary residence in London to earn more money and notoriety from the British literary market. London publishers had already pirated Seventy-Six and Logan , but Neal hoped those companies would pay him to publish Errata and Randolph if he were present to negotiate. They refused. Neal brought enough money to survive for only

5368-501: The British about American institutions, habits, and prospects. Yet Brother Jonathan was not received as the great American novel and it failed to earn Neal the level of international fame he had hoped for, so he returned to the US no longer Cooper's chief rival. Neal returned to the United States from Europe in June 1827 with plans to settle in New York City, but stopped first in his native Portland to visit his mother and sister. There he

5490-768: The Outs" (1841). With the exception of True Womanhood (1859), John Neal published all of his novels between 1817 and 1833. The first five he wrote and published in Baltimore: Keep Cool (1817), Logan (1822), Seventy-Six (1823), Randolph (1823), and Errata (1823). He wrote Brother Jonathan in Baltimore, but revised and published it in London in 1825. He published Rachel Dyer (1828), Authorship (1830), and The Down-Easters (1833) while living in Portland, Maine, but all are reworkings of content he wrote in London. Keep Cool , Neal's first novel, made him "the first in America to be natural in his diction" and

5612-482: The UK on a mission to write about American topics, but biographer Irving T. Richards argues Neal more likely settled into that pattern after connecting with Blackwood. Either way, he quickly became Blackwood's primary authority on US topics. This series of articles highlighted cultural similarities between the US and UK, making the case for an improved transatlantic relationship. It served to counterpoise ample content from contemporary UK authors that predominantly disparaged

5734-453: The US before moving to London, but by mid-1825, American readers generally associated his name with American Writers more than any of his previous works. At the same time, the reception there was much worse than in the UK. American readers were generally offended by Neal's sharp criticism, particularly because he wrote and published it in a country with which they had been at war twice in the previous half century. Neal expected this reaction and

5856-461: The US undeserved praise, lest it stifle the development of a truly distinct American literature. Poe's later critical essays on literature reflected these strictures. Neal wrote the series in London, where he lived between 1824 and 1827. Having moved there from Baltimore, his goals were to establish himself as America's leading literary figure, encourage the development of a uniquely American writing style, and reverse British disdain for literature from

5978-535: The US, when it considered the new nation at all. A decade later, Neal called Blackwood's "the first British Magazine that ever allowed an American fair play". He further claimed Blackwood "published for me what no other magazine-proprietor in the three kingdoms would have dared to publish". The first installment of the American Writers series was published in the September 1824 issue. Before publishing

6100-465: The US. He soon became the first American published in any British literary journal, American Writers being the longest and best-remembered of his works on American topics in multiple UK periodicals. He wrote for Scottish publisher William Blackwood under an English pseudonym, which Neal assumed was convincing. Blackwood and British readers likely realized they were reading the work of an American, and multiple leading American periodicals outed Neal before

6222-499: The United States. The collection of essays and stories he published in his magazine The Yankee "lays the groundwork for reading the nation itself as a collection of voices in conversation" and "asks readers to decide for themselves how to manage the multiple and contending sides of a federal union." To preserve variations in American English he feared might disappear in an increasingly nationalist climate, he became one of

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6344-438: The authors the piece considers, particularly Bryant and Irving. The introduction to the 1927 edition of Irving's A History of New York claimed Neal's to be "the most intelligent review" of that work since its publication in 1809. Referred to by Neal as a book, American Writers was originally published as five successively-numbered installments between September 1824 and February 1825. Their first collection in one publication

6466-481: The bar and started practicing law in Baltimore in 1820. Neal's final years in Baltimore were his most productive as a novelist. He published one novel in 1822 and three more the following year, eventually rising to the status of James Fenimore Cooper 's chief rival for recognition as America's leading novelist. In this turbulent period he quit the Delphian Club on bad terms and accepted excommunication from

6588-558: The bar. Neal defiantly resolved to settle in Portland instead of New York. " 'Verily, verily,' said I, 'if they take that position, here I will stay, till I am both rooted and grounded—grounded in the graveyard, if nowhere else. ' " Neal became a proponent in the US of athletics he had practiced abroad, including Friedrich Jahn 's early Turnen gymnastics and boxing and fencing techniques he learned in Paris, London, and Baltimore. He opened Maine's first gymnasium in 1827, making him

6710-540: The catalyst to move to London was a dinner party with an English friend who quoted Sydney Smith 's 1820 then-notorious remark, "in the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?". Whether it had more to do with Smith or Pinkney, Neal took less than a month after that dinner date to settle his affairs in Baltimore and secure passage on a ship bound for the UK on December 15, 1823. Neal's relocation to London figured into three professional goals that guided him through

6832-444: The commercial viability of his works, and craft a new American literature. As a pioneer of "talk[ing] on paper" or "natural writing", Neal was "the first in America to be natural in his diction " and his work represents "the first deviation from   ... Irvingesque graciousness" in which "not only characters but also genres converse, and are interrogated, challenged, and transformed." Neal declared that he "never shall write what

6954-420: The correspondent that we want". The payment of five guineas was more than Neal had ever received for any magazine submission. Early American literature scholar William B. Cairns considered Blackwood's the most important literary periodical in 1820s Great Britain, a period when such periodicals were more influential than ever before. Neal was already familiar with it and had read it in Baltimore. The editors of

7076-476: The country's first daily columnist. The same year he wrote three-quarters of History of the American Revolution , otherwise credited to Paul Allen . Neal's substantial literary output earned him the moniker " Jehu O' Cataract " from his Delphian Club associates. By these means he was able to pay his expenses while completing his apprenticeship and independently studying law. He was admitted to

7198-399: The editors of a 2016 collection of Blackwood's articles: "The series is notoriously riddled with factual errors". He wrote it all in a conversational tone unique to himself, despite external pressures to adhere to established models. That style was nevertheless more controlled than his other work to maintain his English pseudonym. Literature scholars Edward Watts and David J. Carlson contended

7320-695: The first American to establish a public gym in the US. He offered lessons in boxing and fencing in his law office. The same year he started gyms in nearby Saco and at Bowdoin College . The year before he had published articles on German gymnastics in the American Journal of Education and urged Thomas Jefferson to include a gymnastics school at the University of Virginia . Neal's athletic pursuits modeled "a new sense of maleness" that favored "forbearance based on strength" and helped him regulate

7442-567: The first American to establish a public gymnasium in the US and championed athletics to regulate violent tendencies with which he himself had struggled throughout his life. A largely self-educated man who attended no schools after the age of twelve, Neal was a child laborer who left self-employment in dry goods at twenty-two to pursue dual careers in law and literature. By middle age, Neal had attained comfortable wealth and community standing in his native Portland, Maine , through varied business investments, arts patronage, and civic leadership. Neal

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7564-448: The first in their country's history. Scholars have called American Writers the first history of US literature and the first substantial criticism of American literature. Some contend it is the work for which Neal is best known, at least among his British publications, or for that period of his life. Of all Neal's works of literary criticism, it is the most extensive, and according to literature scholar Abbate Badin, his most interesting to

7686-497: The first writers to employ colloquialism and regional dialects in his writing. Neal used literary criticism in magazines and novels to encourage desired changes in the field and to uplift new writers, most of them women. Noted for his "critical vision", Neal expressed judgments that were widely accepted in his lifetime. "My opinion of other [people's] writings", he said, "has never been ill received; and in every case   ... my judgment has been confirmed, sooner or later, without

7808-423: The five US presidents and current presidential candidates and submitted it to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine . His letter said he was about to leave London to explore Europe, but: "In the mean time, I must have some sort of employment to keep me out of mischief." Biographer Donald A. Sears says "the situation was desperate" when Neal received a response from Scottish publisher William Blackwood : "You are exactly

7930-483: The following May. When reviewing his own work in American Writers , Neal hinted at his identity, saying, "we know him well" and describing his anonymously-published novels: "No matter whose they are—mine or another's   ... I shall neither acknowledge, nor deny them." In his last piece for Blackwood's , published after the final installment of American Writers , Neal proclaimed his true nationality and signed it with his last initial. He revealed his name to Blackwood in

8052-516: The future of the movement. John Neal and his twin sister Rachel were born in the town of Portland in the Massachusetts District of Maine on August 25, 1793, the only children of parents John and Rachel Hall Neal. The senior John Neal, a school teacher, died a month later. Neal's mother, described by former pupil Elizabeth Oakes Smith as a woman of "clear intellect, and no little self-reliance and independence of will", made up

8174-488: The great Republic of Letters ." To achieve this he exploited distinctly American characters, settings, historical events, and manners of speech in his writing. This was a "caustic assault" on British literary elites viewed as aristocrats writing for personal amusement, in contrast to American authors as middle class professionals plying a commercial trade for sustenance. By mimicking the common and sometimes profane language of his countrymen in fiction, Neal hoped to appeal to

8296-625: The half page on James Fenimore Cooper , six pages on Charles Brockden Brown , eight on himself, and ten on Washington Irving . Aside from familiarizing British readers with American authors, Neal's central message in American Writers is that the US had not yet developed its own voice: there is "no such thing in the United States of North America, as a body of native literature   ... bearing any sort of national character." He offered specific recommendations for bringing one about by encouraging natural originality over studied adherence to established models. He said: "If you go in your natural shape, in

8418-631: The house he built on Portland's prestigious State Street in 1836. Also in 1836 he received an honorary master's degree from Bowdoin College, the same institution at which Neal made a living as a self-employed teenage penmanship instructor and that later educated the more economically privileged Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . After the 1830s, Neal became less active in literary circles and increasingly occupied with business, activism, and local arts and civic projects, particularly after receiving inheritances from two paternal uncles that dramatically reduced his need to rely on writing as

8540-491: The influence of the British literary elite and to develop a rival American literature were largely credited to his successors until more recent twenty-first century scholarship shifted that credit to Neal. His short stories are "his highest literary achievement" and are ranked with those of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe , Herman Melville , and Rudyard Kipling . John Neal is often considered an influential American literary figure with no masterpiece of his own. Defying

8662-442: The installment of American Writers that mentions him, Hall called Neal "a liar of the first magnitude" and a "nauseous reptile". A New York critic said Blackwood's Magazine ' s value had "sadly fallen off when a man who could not find a reader in America, goes to England, and ranks first quill." The Boston Commercial Gazette , reacting to the series's first installment, called Neal "a half educated, half crazy headed author" who

8784-489: The ire sparked by his British publications to have died down and for a warm welcome to be in its place. He instead found hostility in Portland to be greater than the nation as a whole. Many still resented him for not only American Writers and his Blackwood and Sons -published novel Brother Jonathan (1825), but his 1823 Baltimore novels Randolph and Errata , the latter of which being a semi-autobiographical story that disparaged well-respected locals. Pattee summarized: "For

8906-529: The last of which includes Neal's review of Irving from American Writers and his review of Cooper from "Late American Books". Of those, Pattee's collection is the most accessible to modern readers. The following authors are critiqued in American Writers : John Neal (writer) John Neal (August 25, 1793 – June 20, 1876) was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. Considered both eccentric and influential, he delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between

9028-455: The late 1820s and the mid 1840s and was during this time a highly sought-after contributor on a variety of topics. Neal published three novels from material he produced in London and focused his new creative writing efforts on a body of short stories that represents his greatest literary achievement. Neal published an average of one tale per year between 1828 and 1846, helping to shape the relatively new short story genre. He began traveling as

9150-413: The law—weary as death", feeling that he spent those years in "open war, with the whole tribe of lawyers in America". "Ironically,   ... at precisely the moment when [Neal] was endeavoring to establish himself as the American writer, Neal was also alienating friends, critics, and the general public at an alarming rate." By late 1823, Neal was ready to relocate away from Baltimore. According to him,

9272-408: The leading US literary figure, usher into existence a new uniquely American literary style, and reverse British disdain for American literature. To accomplish the third goal, Neal sought publication in British literary journals to expose UK readers to writing from the US and convince them of its value. A "man of grievances" according to English scholar George L. Nesbitt, Neal envisioned those journals as

9394-530: The less inspired efforts of his more famous contemporaries and add a dimension to the art of storytelling not to be found in Irving and Poe, rarely in Hawthorne, and rarely in American fiction until Melville and Twain decades later (and Faulkner a century later) began telling their tales." Ironically, "David Whicher" was published anonymously and not attributed to Neal until the 1960s. "The Haunted Man" (1832)

9516-438: The lost family income by establishing her own school and renting rooms in her home to boarders . She also received assistance from the siblings' unmarried uncle, James Neal, and others in their Quaker community. Neal grew up in "genteel poverty", attending his mother's school, a Quaker boarding school, and the public school in Portland. Neal claimed his lifelong struggle with a short temper and violent tendencies originated in

9638-684: The magazine's pages. When submitting poetry to Neal for review, Whittier made the request, "if you don't like it, say so privately; and I will quit poetry, and everything also of a literary nature ". Poe was Neal's most historically impactful discovery and when he quit poetry for short stories it was likely due to Neal's influence. Poe thanked Neal for "the very first words of encouragement I ever remember to have heard". After Poe's death two decades later, Neal defended his legacy against attacks in Rufus Wilmot Griswold 's unsympathetic obituary of Poe, labeling Griswold "a Rhadamanthus , who

9760-581: The movement to incorporate Portland as a city and build the community's first parks and sidewalks. He became interested in architecture, interior design, and furniture design, developing pioneering, simple, and functional solutions that influenced other designers outside his local area. Many of his literary contemporaries interpreted Neal's change in focus as a disappearance. Hawthorne wrote in 1845 of "that wild fellow, John Neal", who "surely has long been dead, else he never could keep himself so quiet." James Russell Lowell in 1848 claimed he had "wasted in Maine

9882-409: The number at 135. Those figures, both living and dead at the time, included novelists, poets, political writers, scientific writers, philosophers, theologians, journalists, historians, geographers, and even painters. Each figure is covered with at least a paragraph, though some get multiple pages. Richards said the coverage of each writer "frequently grossly violated" their comparative importance, such as

10004-483: The preface to his poem The Battle of Niagara (1818), American Writers was likely a primary influence on Edgar Allan Poe 's theory of poetry. Poe's own involvement with Blackwood's supports this theory among scholars. Neal said: "The day is rapidly approaching, when the poetry of conventional meter must give way to a mightier poetry in prose." Neal's theory "boldly prophesies the organicism of" Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman , according to Lease, and probably had

10126-588: The pseudonym in all correspondence with him while writing American Writers . He made clear it was a pseudonym, but maintained he was English. Scholars believe Blackwood and his editors figured out quickly they were dealing with an American. The American Writers series appeared in Blackwood's under the initials X.Y.Z., which he borrowed from fellow contributors John Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart . He used other names for other Blackwood's pieces. Despite describing himself in those pages as English, Cairns and Pattee believe most British readers knew they were reading

10248-736: The public school, at which he was bullied and physically abused by classmates and the schoolmaster. To reduce his mother's financial burden, Neal left school and home at the age of twelve for full-time employment. As an adolescent haberdasher and dry goods salesman in Portland and Portsmouth , Neal learned dishonest business practices like passing off counterfeit money and misrepresenting merchandise quality and quantity. Laid off multiple times due to business failures resulting from US embargoes against British imports , Neal traveled through Maine as an itinerant penmanship instructor, watercolor teacher, and miniature portrait artist. At twenty years of age in 1814, he answered an ad for employment with

10370-432: The recession following the war upended the firm and left Pierpont and Neal bankrupt in Baltimore in 1816. Though the "Pierpont, Lord, and Neal" wholesale/retail chain proved to be short-lived, Neal's relationship with Pierpont grew into the closest and longest-lived friendship of his life. Neal's experience in business riding out the multiple booms and busts that eventually left him bankrupt at age twenty-two made him into

10492-419: The rigid moralism and sentimentality of his American contemporaries Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, Neal's early novels between the late 1810s and 1820s depict dark, physically-flawed, conflicted Byronesque heroes of great intellect and morals. His brand of Romanticism reflected an aversion for self-criticism and revision, relying instead on "nearly automatic writing" to define his style, enhance

10614-533: The second installment, Blackwood requested some changes, particularly that Neal tone down his attack on John Elihu Hall and refrain from calling him a blackguard. After publishing the last installment in February 1825, Blackwood sent Neal a letter congratulating him on completing the series. He encouraged standalone articles in the future, but to continue on American topics. Neal did not publish anything else substantial in Blackwood's until September, however. Neal

10736-525: The series as "a tissue of lies from beginning to end". Citing the broadly positive feedback he had already received from his readership, Blackwood responded, "there are not manny [ sic ] articles I have had which have done so much for [ Blackwood's ] as these of this writer." To Neal, he wrote after the last installment: "You have finished your series in capital style. The whole is spirited and most original." Neal had written five novels in Baltimore and published extensively in periodicals throughout

10858-554: The series foreshadowed a clash on the literary horizon between genteel traditions and popular vulgarity in Anglophone literature. Neal critiqued his own works and included a short biography of himself in American Writers . Richards considered that coverage to be far out of proportion to his role in American literature. Literature scholar Jonathan Elmer called it "brazen". The coverage offers mixed reviews, saying of himself "he overdoes everything" in his novels, "hardly one of which it

10980-486: The series was completed. The series was well received in the UK and exerted influence over British critics, some of whom copied Neal's analyses and misinformation into their own essays. It conversely drew considerable ire from US journalists, none more severe than William Lloyd Garrison , who warned Neal to be on guard should he return to his home country. When he did, Neal found inflammatory broadsides and in-person hostility in his hometown of Portland, Maine , leading to

11102-772: The sinews and cords of his pugilist brain". Friend and fellow Portland native Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described Neal in 1860 as "a good deal tempered down but fire enough still". After years of vaguely affiliating with Unitarianism and universalism , Neal converted to Congregationalism in 1851. Through deepened religiosity he found new moral arguments for women's rights, potential release from his violent tendencies, and inspiration for seven religious essays. Neal collected these "exhortations" in One Word More (1854), which "rambles passionately for two hundred pages and closes with breathless metaphor" in an effort to convert "the reasoning and thoughtful among believers". At

11224-487: The spirit of the experience. This analysis probably influenced Nathaniel Hawthorne 's similar take on Views and Reviews in American History by William Gilmore Simms (1845) two decades later. By claiming the US did not yet have a distinct literature, Neal made it possible for authors of the later American Renaissance to feel justified in disregarding a half century of American precedent and thinking themselves

11346-516: The staying power of Neal's opinions, many of which are reflected by other critics decades later, notably " Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses " by Mark Twain . Theories of poetry and prose in American Writers foreshadowed and likely influenced later works by Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman . Neal argued American literature relied too much on British precedent and had failed to develop its own voice. He offered sharp criticism of many authors while simultaneously urging critics not to offer writers from

11468-450: The trouble of breaking in". Cairns credits Neal's coverage of himself with ushering a brief period of increased critical attention to his novels among British reviewers. Blackwood's contributor David Macbeth Moir called American Writers the best assessment of US literature yet published, praising "its knowledge of a subject concerning which we sit in darkness." Conversely, fellow contributor William Maginn wrote to Blackwood, attacking

11590-506: The true garb of your nation, you will never be laughed at." Neal also advised literary critics to give US writers more attention, but to avoid undeserved praise, for fear it would stifle creative growth. "Let us never make a prodigious fuss about any American book, which if it were English, would produce little or no sensation   ... it is only insulting the Americans", he said. Following his own advice, his assessment of individual writers

11712-700: The truth of them." Theophilus Parsons , called a "blockhead" by Neal in American Writers , wrote in the United States Literary Gazette for May 1825 that Neal's authorship rendered the series invalid. Joseph T. Buckingham called it an "unnatural" and "unprincipled" attack on Neal's country. Hall in the Port Folio called Neal a "slimy reptile" and "impudent scribbler", suggesting controversy drove him from Baltimore to London "where he earns his crust by defaming his native land", such that he "should be spit upon or cowskinned". After reading

11834-408: The two groups. "It was there," said he, "there exactly where that horse is passing now, that they first fired upon me. I set off at a speed up that hill, but, finding nine of the party there, I determined to dash over that elevation in front; I attempted it, but shot after shot was fired after me, until I preferred making one desperate attempt, sword in hand, to being shot down, like a fat goose, upon

11956-472: The urging of Longfellow and other friends, John Neal returned to novel writing late in life, publishing True Womanhood in 1859. To fill a gap in his income between 1863 and 1866 he wrote three dime novels . In 1869 he published his "most readable book, and certainly one of the most entertaining autobiographies to come out of nineteenth-century America". Reflecting on his life this way inspired Neal to amplify his activism and assume regional leadership roles in

12078-497: The violent tendencies with which he struggled throughout his life. In 1828, Neal established The Yankee magazine with himself as editor, and continued publication through the end of 1829. He used its pages to vindicate himself to fellow Portlanders, critique American art and drama, host a discourse on the nature of New Englander identity, advance his developing feminist ideas, and encourage new literary voices, most of them women. Neal also edited many other periodicals between

12200-545: The women's suffrage movement. His last two books are a collection of pieces for and about children titled Great Mysteries and Little Plagues (1870), and a guidebook for his hometown titled Portland Illustrated (1874). By 1870, in his old age, he had amassed a comfortable fortune, valued at $ 80,000. His last appearance in the public eye was likely an 1875 syndicated article from the Portland Advertiser about an eighty-one year-old Neal physically overpowering

12322-588: The work of an American. Likely reflecting British readership in general, The Westminster Review stated years later in 1831: "There is no mistaking the hand of John Neal" in his work published in British periodicals. US readers also largely knew American Writers was the work of an American, and many connected the series to Neal. Based on his reading of the first two installments, Philadelphian John Elihu Hall outed Neal as author in The Port Folio in late 1824. The United States Literary Gazette followed suit

12444-496: Was American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824–1825) , edited by Fred Lewis Pattee in 1937. That edition includes "Late American Books", an essay originally published in Blackwood's in September 1825. Scholar Robert Bain considered that piece the sixth installment of American Writers . The 1937 edition also includes a bibliography of Neal's other works and excerpts from his 1823 novel Randolph . Randolph includes what Pattee and Badin considered

12566-433: Was "brutally honest", according to Welch. Where he did find what he considered truly American literature, he named only Brown, himself, and James Kirke Paulding . He wrote about all authors from recollection, having brought neither any of their works nor any notes on them from America. As a result, Neal devoted more space in some cases to anecdotes he could remember about an author than to analysis of their work. According to

12688-409: Was "handsomely paid" to be one of the magazine's most prolific contributors. His first Blackwood's article, a profile on the 1824 candidates for US president and the five presidents who had served to that point, was the first article by an American to appear in a British literary journal and was quoted and republished widely throughout Europe. As the first written history of American literature,

12810-542: Was "kicked from every city in the United States" to "escape to England, to sell their venom, froth, and lies , to mercenary journalists." Hezekiah Niles , who briefly employed Neal in Baltimore, referred to Neal as "some fool" and a "renegado" in the Weekly Register , suggesting American Writers was published to intimidate America's developing literary community. The most severe reaction came from William Lloyd Garrison , whose May 1825 reaction to American Writers

12932-470: Was Garrison's most substantial contribution to the Newburyport Herald , whereat he was apprenticing. He said: "We cannot express sufficiently, our Indignation at this renegade's base attempt to assassinate the reputation of this country", warning Neal to be on guard should he return to the US, "or you may reap that reward for your vile labors, which you so richly merit." This was the beginning of

13054-416: Was Neal's nighttime distraction from laboring sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for more than four months to produce an index for six years of weekly publications of Hezekiah Niles 's Weekly Register magazine, which Niles admitted was "the most laborious work of the kind that ever appeared in any country". In 1819, he published a play and took his first paying job as a newspaper editor, becoming

13176-433: Was aware of it before he returned to the US. His friend Tobias Watkins in Baltimore wrote him in July 1825 to inform him of the poor reaction from American journalists, including many with whom Neal had associated before leaving Baltimore. Years later he wrote, "the whole paperhood of America, were baiting and badgering me, at every turn,   ... because, forsooth, in dealing with our American authors,   ... I had told

13298-421: Was captured by the 1930 biographer of Fitz-Greene Halleck , who referred to Neal's critique of Halleck as "difficult to match for hopeless inaccuracy and unabashed egotism." Richards summarized American Writers as "altogether honest, reasonably just, and exceedingly shrewd in its judgments." Richards contended a century after American Writers that scholars generally still agreed with Neal's assessment of many of

13420-470: Was confronted by citizens offended by his derision of prominent citizens in the semi-autobiographical Errata , the way he depicted New England dialect and habits in Brother Jonathan , and his criticism of American writers in Blackwood's Magazine . Residents posted broadsides , engaged in verbally and physically violent exchanges with Neal in the streets, and conspired to block his admission to

13542-444: Was convinced that anything submitted by an American to any British periodical would be rejected if it did not disparage the US. For his writing to be accepted, "Neal treated the venture as an undercover operation", according to literature scholar Ellen Bufford Welch. Pattee said, "he considered [it] an impenetrable disguise". Neal started by introducing himself as Carter Holmes in his first communication with Blackwood, and continued using

13664-464: Was designed to be completed in seven-to-eight years, earned admission to the bar in a community known for rigorous requirements, and contributed prodigiously to newspapers and literary magazines, two of which he edited at different points. Two months after Neal's bankruptcy trial, he submitted his first contribution to The Portico and quickly became the magazine's second-most prolific contributor of poems, essays, and literary criticism, though he

13786-482: Was in actuality a local Black man hired by the broadside's authors to follow him in public. Neal allowed the man to follow until Neal's detractors could no longer afford to pay him to continue. Neal had not planned on staying in Portland, but changed his mind in defiance of the opposition to his return. He stayed in Portland until his death forty-nine years later. Along with Neal's essays on drama in The Yankee and

13908-446: Was just beginning to emerge, working immediately and consistently within the nation's developing "complex web of print culture". Throughout his adult life, especially in the 1830s, Neal was a prolific contributor to newspapers and magazines, writing essays on a wide variety of topics including but not limited to art criticism, literary criticism, phrenology , women's rights, early German gymnastics, and slavery. His efforts to subvert

14030-478: Was likely the basis for the section on Bryant in James Russell Lowell 's satirical poem A Fable for Critics over twenty years later. American Writers exerted influence over British periodicals and the way they treated literature from the US; many used quotes from the series to substantiate their own work, including multiple instances of misinformation unwittingly copied from Neal. For instance,

14152-530: Was living at 3 Ainslie Place on Edinburgh's elegant Moray Estate in the West End. His bookshop was within easy walking distance, being located at 45 George Street. William Blackwood died in 1834 and is buried in an ornate vault in the lower western section of Old Calton Burial Ground . The character Oakstick in John Paterson's Mare , James Hogg 's allegorical satire on the Edinburgh publishing scene,

14274-494: Was moving from Princes Street to 45 George Street as George Street was "becoming more and more a place of business and the east end of Princes Street is now like Charring Cross , a mere place for coaches". His brother Thomas bought 43 George and in 1830 Thomas Hamilton remodelled the entire frontage of the pair for the Blackwood Brothers . Thomas' shop operated as a silk merchant. At the end of his life, Blackwood

14396-566: Was never paid. Two years later he took over as editor for what ended up being the last issue. The magazine was closely associated with the Delphian Club , which he founded in 1816 with Dr. Tobias Watkins , John Pierpont, and four other men. Neal felt indebted to this "high-minded, generous, unselfish" association of "intellectual and companionable" people for many of the happy memories and employment connections he enjoyed in Baltimore. While writing his earliest poetry, novels, and essays he

14518-711: Was one of many new contributors adopted by Blackwood in the early 1820s; alongside Eyre Evans Crowe , he was one of two to exhibit the publisher's desired style notably well. Neal's article in the May 1824 issue was the first by an American to appear in any British literary journal, and it was soon republished by the New European in multiple languages throughout mainland Europe. During his three years in England, Neal contributed articles to eight other British periodicals, including The European Magazine , The London Magazine , Monthly Magazine , The New Monthly Magazine , and The Westminster Review . He had an article in

14640-455: Was studying law as an unpaid apprentice in the office of William H. Winder , a fellow Delphian. Neal's business failure had left him without enough "money to take a letter from the post-office", so Neal "cast about for something better to do   ... and, after considering the matter for ten minutes or so, determined to try my hand at a novel." When he wrote his first book, fewer than seventy novels had been published by "not more than half

14762-418: Was the first to use the phrase son-of-a-bitch in a US work of fiction. He attained his greatest literary achievements between 1817 and 1835, during which time he was America's first daily newspaper columnist, the first American published in British literary journals , author of the first history of American literature , America's first art critic , a short story pioneer, a children's literature pioneer, and

14884-627: Was the organ of the Scottish Tory party, and round it gathered a host of writers. This included John Neal , making Maga the first British literary journal to publish work by an American, and the publisher of the first history of US literature, Neal's series American Writers (1824–25). In 1825 he published Neal's 1,324-page novel Brother Jonathan at a great financial loss. Their relationship fell apart shortly thereafter. In 1829, he wrote to his son William in India telling him that he

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