"
Irving, Cooper, and Bryant are thus the pioneers in a new phase
of American literary activity, often called, for convenience in
labeling, the Knickerbocker Group because of the identification
of these men with New York. And close behind these leaders come a
younger company, destined likewise, in the shy boyish words of
Hawthorne, one of the number, "to write books that would be read
in England." For by 1826 Hawthorne and Longfellow were out of
college and were trying to learn to write. Ticknor, Prescott, and
Bancroft, somewhat older men, were settling to their great tasks.
Emerson was entering upon his duties as a minister. Edgar Allan
Poe, at that University of Virginia which Jefferson had just
founded, was doubtless revising "Tamerlane and Other Poems" which
he was to publish in Boston in the following year. Holmes was a
Harvard undergraduate. Garrison had just printed Whittier's first
published poem in the Newburyport "Free Press." Walt Whitman was
a barefooted boy on Long Island, and Lowell, likewise seven years
of age, was watching the birds in the treetops of Elmwood.
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