The American Literary Blog

Major John André was a British army officer hanged as a spy on October 2, 1780 after conspiring with Benedict Arnold over the fate of We...

It was on the September 11, 1829 that Nathaniel Parker Willis copyrighted his book Fugitive Poetry , a collection mostly of previously pu...

When Nathaniel Parker Willis and his ( second ) wife Cornelia heard of Anne Charlotte Lynch 's engagement to Vincenzo Botta , they i...

Mason Brothers knew they had a good thing in Fanny Fern when they asked her to write a novel to publish. When she started writing it, they...

From his quaint cottage at Fordham, New York, Edgar Allan Poe wrote to editor and poet Nathaniel Parker Willis on April 20, 1849: The p...

Richard Storrs Willis did not generally get involved with the bickering between his older siblings , sister Fanny Fern and brother Nathan...

Fanny Fern (pen name of Sara Payson Willis ) had garnered major popularity through works like her semi-autobiographical novel Ruth Hall . T...

The Portland, Maine-born Nathaniel Parker Willis grew up partly in Boston, graduated from Yale in Connecticut, before touring the United St...

After 16 and a half years, the final column by Fanny Fern was published on October 12, 1872 — two days after her death. Fern, whose birth n...

Nathaniel Parker Willis was traveling overseas when he wrote to a friend, "I should like to marry in England." He worried that ...

Mount Auburn Cemetery , a National Historic Landmark, was consecrated on September 24, 1831. In his consecration address, Justice Joseph S...

Onlookers were shocked at what they saw (and what they heard). "This man is the seducer of my wife!" screamed Edwin Forrest as he...

James Fenimore Cooper died in September 1851 . Despite a slightly abrasive personality, Cooper was immediately recognized as an American li...

Harriet Jacobs was born on February 11, 1813.* To be more precise, Harriet Jacobs was born enslaved in Edenton, North Carolina. Both her ...

From the January 29, 1845 issue of the New York Mirror , edited by Nathaniel Parker Willis and George Pope Morris (the editorial introdu...

Nathaniel Parker Willis outlived his own soaring reputation. His funeral (and, perhaps, that of his literary reputation) was held on Januar...

There really is no one like Nathaniel Parker Willis (January 20, 1806 - January 20, 1867), the American poet, editor, publisher, travel ess...