Samuel Lorenzo Knapp finds a place among American literary scholars and critics as an early historian of national American literature and as the author of Lectures on American Literature (1827), a pioneer "history of the American mind." In the dedication to William Austin Seeley, Esq., Knapp explains his motivation in producing what is now considered the first critical history of American literature. To Seeley he writes: "I know you are among the number who are anxious that we, as a people, should speak freely and justly of ourselves, and honestly strive to place our claims on the broad basis of well authenticated historical facts." It was in the service of this cause that he had completed his volume, which would "establish the claims of the United States to that intellectual, literary, and scientific eminence ... she deserves to have."

Samuel Lorenzo Knapp was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the fifth of...