John Davis, novelist, poet, translator, and teacher, although not an American by birth or naturalization, owes much of his literary recognition to the United States. His writing career flourished during the twenty-year period (1798-1817) that he traveled up and down the eastern seaboard. In all, he published fifteen prose pieces, four long poetic pieces and collections of poetry; and he published other verses in the leading newspapers and journals in the United States and England. A dedicated and indefatigable worker at the craft of writing, he was convinced that what he wrote had value and that this value would ensure the endurance of his literary work. He was correct in his assumption, at least for a substantial number of years in the early and mid-nineteenth century, especially with regard to four once highly popular books-- Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States (1803), The First...