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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2002
Among the earliest of playwrights and novelists to make use of American material, as well as the first historian of the theater and of the arts of
design in the United States, was William Dunlap (1766-1839), a native
of Perth Amboy. Here the first eleven years of his life were spent, and
here he was buried after his death in New York City. Briefer still was the
residence in his native State of a far more famous literary figure, James
Fenimore Cooper, born at Burlington in 1789. Though his family moved
to Cooperstown, New York, soon thereafter, the novelist made use of his
native locale in The Water Witch, a tale of the New Jersey coast.
A frequent visitor who journeyed down from his home on the Hudson
River was Washington Irving (1783-1859). He began his serious literary
work in Newark during 1806-7 as a participant in roistering and bacchanalian dinners at the Gouverneur Kemble mansion, Cockloft Hall. The
conviviality of his companions, known significantly as "The Nine Worthies" and "The Lads of Kilkenny," inspired the satiric Salmagundi papers, the success of which set the pattern for Irving's career. He also
wrote poetry describing the Passaic River and the surrounding countryside.
As in the other arts, New Jersey's progress in literature slowed down
between 1830 and 1860. Almost the sole original spark in the mass of
indifferent writing of this period came from the Englishman, Henry William Herbert (1807-1858). From his cottage on the Passaic River near
Newark, where he lived from 1845 until his death, he issued under the
pseudonym of "Frank Forester" a large number of stories and sketches
having to do with life and sport in the open. He also wrote several historical novels, less sententious and romantic than the prevailing mode.
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