Document Type

Book

Publication Date

1984

Abstract

The Westward Movement carried with it much of the transatlantic and colonial heritage. In 1758 almanac-maker Nathaniel Ames prophetically remarked: “So Arts and Sciences will change the Face of Nature in their Tour from Hence over the Appalachian Mountains to the Western Ocean." This conviction J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur also upheld in his Letters from an American Farmer (1782). Of course, most frontier folk preferred practical education, many even attributing book lamin’ to Old Nick. Still, from the beginning there was Western literary criticism—notions, talk, jottings about Western themes, Western writings, Western writers.

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