SOURCE: "Theodore Roosevelt, Brander Matthews, and the Campaign for Literary Americanism," in American Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 1, March, 1989, pp. 93-111.

In the following essay, Oliver explores Matthews's long friendship with Theodore Roosevelt and the influence of the relationship on his fiction and nonfiction.

Yet the fact remains that the greatest work must bear the stamp of originality. In exactly the same way the greatest work must bear the stamp of nationalism. American work must smack of our own soil, mental and moral, no less than physical, or it will have little of permanent value.

—Theodore Roosevelt, "Nationalism in Literature and Art"

No president of the United States was better acquainted with and took a greater interest in the literary canon than Theodore Roosevelt. Though the Harvard-educated Rough Rider strove to project a "cowboy" image to the public, he was at heart a "literary feller," as he confided to his...