【正文】 for the uniqueness of America39。s mission. But none of those writers could satisfy the growing American appetite for prose fiction focused on American issues and grown from American imaginations. Calls for an American literature began during the Revolution and became more frequent and urgent as independence was assured.Overthecourseofthe 19th century the country progressed from an agricultural economy concentrated on the Eastern seaboard to an industrialized nation that spanned the continent. With the dramatic changes in the nation came dramatic changes in its literature. When the century opened, only a handful of novels had been written, but by midcentury American fiction rivaled the best in the world. Biography and history remained strong。 religious writing, on the other hand, had substantially declined in importance.AManifestations of NationhoodAmongthefirstmanifestations of nationhood was the recognition that America had its own language and that American English differed from British English. Pioneering lexicographer Noah Webster led a call for uniquely American traditions in language and literature, and he undertook the massive project of developing an American dictionary. He had already advocated changes in American spellings of English words in such writings as Dissertations on the English Language (1789). Webster published his first dictionary in 1806. The first edition of his major work, American Dictionary of the English Language, came out in 1828. What made this work radical was his insistence on defining words based not only on traditional English usage but also on American variations in usage, called Americanisms, and his inclusion of at least 5000 new words not previously recognized by English dictionaries.A1HistoryGainingindependencealso provided the United States with a history of its own. Samuel Miller’s A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (1803) and Mercy Otis Warren’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (1805) were both substantial histories of 18thcentury America, including the Revolution. Many of the histories of America from the early and mid1800s achieved additional drama through their authors’ interpretations of the growing greatness of the nation. Foremost among these patriotic and romantic histories was the monumental tenvolume History of the United States (18341876) by George Bancroft, who is often called the father of American history. A2Early Fiction: IrvingLocalhistories,like general histories, were also of interest in the early part of the century. History of New York (1809), by Washington Irving but ostensibly written by Irving39。s famous ic creation, the Dutch American scholar Diedrich Knickerbocker, offered a surprising twist on standard local history. A satire on the exaggeration and earnestness often found in local histories, this work seemed to reflect America39。s desire to break away from established forms of writing and to engage more fully in the world of imaginative literature.Literarymagazinesproliferated in the early 1800s, bearing witness in yet another way to a public appetite for fiction. Port Folio was founded in Philadelphia in 1801 and discussed both politics and literature. From 1807 to 1808 Irving and James Kirke Paulding published the literary magazine Salmagundi。 or, The WhimWhams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq., and Others, which was devoted to satirical writings.Throughhissatires,sketches, and short stories, Irving was one of the most influential American authors of the first half of the 19th century. Among Irving’s bestknown legends is “Rip Van Winkle,” in which a man from New York’s Catskill Mountains falls asleep before the beginning of the Revolution and wakes up after it is over to find his world happily transformed. In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” an awkward and naive schoolteacher named Ichabod Crane is driven from his small New York town by a faked headless horseman. First published in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (18191820), this story and others like it provided American legends and helped shape an American folklore.A3Westward ExpansionTravelnarrativesbecame increasingly popular, especially as the country expanded westward. With the Louisiana Purchase, the United States took possession of a vast, unmapped territory. Early accounts of expeditions made in the name of future national expansion include Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi and Through the Western Parts of Louisiana (1810) by explorer Zebulon Pike, and History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark to the Sources of the Missouri (1814). The latter work, which emphasizes the idea of the explorer as hero, was piled by diplomat Nicholas Biddle from the notes of the expedition. America’swestwardexpansion also generated a sizable collection of political prose, especially in light of manifest destiny—a belief that the country’s territorial expansion was not only inevitable but also divinely ordained. The term manifest destiny was coined by writer John Louis O39。Sullivan in 39。Annexation,39。 an article that argued for the annexation of Texas and appeared in the JulyAugust 1845 issue of United States Magazine and Democratic Review. Other articles in that issue acknowledged that as the United States expanded, Native American cultures were being lost. Withwestwardexpansion came displacement of Native Americans. From the early 1800s on, anguished speeches were presented by Native American leaders who faced a bleak future. Tenskwatawa, a Shawnee prophet, delivered one such speech to the Iroquois nation in 1806. Other speeches addressed to American officials in Washington, ., pointed to the destruction of Native American cultures as the United States expanded. HenryRoweSchoolcraft, an ethnologist and geologist, preserved a great deal of information about Native Americans in the Great Lakes region.