American literature

 Is the literature written or produced in the area of the United

States and its preceding colonies. The New England colonies
were the center of early American literature.
 This history of American literature begins with the arrival of
English-speaking Europeans in what would become the United
States. At first American literature was naturally a colonial
literature, by authors who were Englishmen and who thought
and wrote as such.
 John Smith, a soldier of fortune, is credited with initiating
American literature.
 His chief books included A True Relation
of…Virginia…(1608) and The Generall Historie of
Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624).
 (Baptized January 6, 1580, Willoughby, Lincolnshire,
England—died June 21, 1631, London), English explorer
and early leader of the Jamestown Colony, the first
permanent English settlement in North America. Smith
played an equally important role as a cartographer and a
prolific writer who vividly depicted the natural abundance
of the New World, whetting the colonizing appetite of
prospective English settlers.
 Smith grew up on his family’s farm and was apprenticed
in his teens to a wealthy merchant. At age 16 or 17, his
adventuresome spirit found an outlet on the battlefields of
continental Europe, where he fought for the Netherlands in
its war of independence from Spain.
 Jamestown Colony, first permanent English settlement in
North America, located near present-day Williamsburg,
Virginia.