Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hulton-Getty/Tony Stone Images

Those who have sought to capture the American experience include: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (The Song of Hiawatha) (Evangeline), Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage), Charles Waddell Chesnutt (The Conjure Woman), Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter), John Richardson (Wacousta), Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin), James Fenimore Cooper (The Last of the Mohicans), and Henry James (Washington Square).