On Western Waters: Anglo-American Nonfictional Narrative in the Nineteenth Century
Anglo-American westward expansion provided a major impulse to the development of the young United States鈥� narrative tradition. Early U.S. writers also looked to the South, that is, to the Spanish New World and, in some cases, to Spain itself. Washington Irving鈥檚 鈥淎 History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus鈥� (1828), the first full-length biography of the admiral in English, inaugurated the trend, and Mark Twain's 鈥淟ife on the Mississippi鈥� (1883) transformed it by focusing on the life and lives of the Mississippi River Valley and using an approach informed by Miguel de Cervantes鈥檚 鈥淒on Quijote de la Mancha.鈥� From Irving鈥檚 鈥渄iscovery of America鈥� to Twain鈥檚 tribute to the disappearing era of steamboat travel and commerce on the Mississippi, the tales about 鈥渨estern waters,鈥� told via their authors鈥� varied engagements with Spanish history and literature, constitute a seldom acknowledged dimension in Anglo-America's nonfictional narrative literary history.
Anglo-American expansion into the West and far West of North America provided a major impulse to the development of the young United States鈥� narrative tradition. Travel accounts figured prominently, and most, from Washington Irving鈥檚 A Tour on the Prairies (1835), to Francis Parkman鈥檚 The Oregon Trail (1847鈥�1849), to Mark Twain鈥檚 Roughing It (1872), looked westward. In fact, U.S. nonfictional literature was born on the lands and waters of western exploration. This phenomenon inspired the internationally renowned Argentine writer and bibliophile Jorge Luis Borges to remark in 1967, while holding the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard, that in the United States, even the American West seemed to have been invented in New England.1
America鈥檚 early writers looked not only to the West but also to the South, that is, to the Spanish New World and, in notable cases, to Spain. Washington Irving鈥檚 A History of the Life and Voyages of . . .