John Neal bibliography

rdf:langString John Neal bibliography

rdf:langString John Neal

rdf:langString The bibliography of American writer John Neal (1793–1876) spans more than sixty years from the War of 1812 through Reconstruction and includes novels, short stories, poetry, articles, plays, lectures, and translations published in newspapers, magazines, literary journals, gift books, pamphlets, and books. Favorite topics included women's rights, feminism, gender, race, slavery, children, education, law, politics, art, architecture, literature, drama, religion, gymnastics, civics, American history, science, phrenology, travel, language, political economy, and temperance. Between 1817 and 1835, Neal became the first American published in British literary journals, author of the first history of American literature, the first American art critic, a children's literature pioneer, a forerunner of the American Renaissance, and one of the first American male advocates of women's rights. As the first American author to use natural diction and one of the first to write characters with regional American accents, Neal's fiction aligns with the literary nationalist and regionalist movements. A pioneer of colloquialism, Neal is the first to use the phrase son-of-a-bitch in an American work of fiction. His fiction explores the romantic and gothic genres. Neal was a prolific contributor to periodicals, particularly in the second half of the 1830s. His critiques of literature, art, and drama anticipated future movements and contributed to the careers of many authors whose careers historically eclipsed Neal's. As a critic and political commentator, his essays and journalism showed distrust of institutions and an affinity for self-examination and self-reliance. Many of Neal's pamphlets are lectures he delivered between 1829 and 1848, when he supplemented his income by traveling on the lyceum circuit. He also published many short stories, averaging one per year in this time period. Neal's tales helped shape the genre and early children's literature and challenged socio-political phenomena associated with Jacksonian democracy. As a translator he worked mostly on French compositions but was able to read and write to some degree in eleven languages other than his native English. The bulk of his novels were published between 1822 and 1828 though he continued writing novels until the last decade of his life. His last major work was an 1874 guidebook for his hometown of Portland, Maine. There are four posthumous collections of his writing, published between 1920 and 1978.

rdf:langString John Neal