Popular American Fiction and the Invention of the Pilgrims

Pilgrim Myths in American Fiction, 1820-1920 portrays how a distinctly American narrative evolved through fiction and not solely through the history books.

Through an exploration of nineteenth-century fiction, Kari Miller reveals the demonization of the Puritans and the subsequent idealization of the Pilgrims. New England-based writers such as Lydia Maria Child, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne utilized their local and familial history to write novels exploring America’s early cultural and moral foundations, portraying the Puritans as intolerant hypocrites. By contrast, Harriet Vaughan Cheney, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Jane Goodwin Austin celebrated their Pilgrim ancestors, whose mission more closely aligned with emerging American ideals. These American legends developed through popular fiction that was widely available and easily shared, written by authors on a mission to define American identity and for whom the story was both personal and local. To understand how the Pilgrims became America’s ＂forefathers,＂ Miller reveals how fiction can teach us almost as much as fact.

Kari Miller is professor of English at Georgia State University