The history of America started with the Settlement of Jamestown in 1607. Since the literature of a country is intimately connected with its history, we have to go right back to the earliest times for an understanding of American literature. True be belles-lettres or literature of a purely aesthetic sense came to be written in America only by about the close of the 18th century. But if recording of human experiences can be termed literature what the early colonists wrote must be deemed an integral part of American Literature.

It is urged that the early writers were all Englishmen and hence what they wrote cannot be included in American writings, but as M.C. Tyler says, “Notwithstanding their English birth, these first writers in America were Americans. We may not exclude them from out history of American Literature. They founded that literature, they are its Fathers, they stamped their spiritual lineaments upon it, and we shall never deeply enter into the meanings of American Literature in its later forms without tracing it back affectionately to its beginning with them.”

It must also be remembered that through Captain John Smith, William Bradford and Mrs. Bradstreet, Edward Taylor all came from England. They wrote in an altogether new setting, and what they wrote naturally was influenced by their environment. America has lent its colour and stamp upon their works and hence they belong legitimately to American literature though England and claim it as her own by right of nationality.

Engrossed as they were in the mighty task of building a commonwealth free from tyrannical rule of kings, these hardy pioneers did not care much for writing belles-letter. But the accounts of travel, the descriptions of the land, and faithful reports of colonial life, throb with their pride in what were doing. They reflect their aspirations and hopes, the trials and the set-backs of those who were fighting against the wilderness. It is in these writings of the first stage in American literary history that we find how, as James Russell Howell puts it, the nation grew:

Strong thro’ shifts, an’ wants an’ paints,
Nursed by stern men with empires in their brains.

Colonial American literature depicts the dangerous adventure, the hard work and difficult decisions that went into the process of building a nation.

Moreover in the pages of these early books we discover some thing important-the basic ingredients that make up the American character. The American spirits its made up largely of courage, industry and optimism, characteristics that in spite men and women with confidence in attacking any problem that may arise. The hardships of living conditions, Indian attacks, sickness and starvation are from the beginning reflected in the pages of Smith, Bradford and Winthrop. That despite innumerable dangers, the colonists flourished is a tribute to their courage and tenacity. Their writings, therefore, form an important saga in American history. The effect of Puritanism lingered long after the puritan movement expired in the 18th century. It impregnated the new enthusiastic religions which arose in that century and continued as a living force in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Northern abolitionists showed all the characteristics of Puritanism, which have still been in evidence in the crusaders for temperance, reform and world peace in our own time. “Hence it is only sensible that a student of American literary thought should trace it from the very beginning.” “Our colonial literature became a great reservoir of material and inspiration for that of the 19th century, for readers today it still provides an understanding of those bedrock American experiences which developed the national character and our peculiarly American institutions.

Moreover American thought and conduct today reflect points of view and patterns of reasoning which antedate the Revolution. No living American whatever his descent has wholly escaped the literature of the May Flower compact, Poor Richard Almanac and the Declaration of Independence. To trace the roots of American literary tradition, we have to go right back to the colonial period.