SOURCE: "Knickerbocker Era of American Letters," in Harper's Magazine, Vol. CV, No. 629, October, 1902, pp. 677-83.

In this brief essay, Woodberry discusses the Knickerbocker era of American letters in its heyday under the bright lights of Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant, and afterward under the lesser lights who presided over the decline of that era. The critic touches generally upon the literary conditions and atmosphere in early America and early New York that helped give the work of the Knickerbockers its general character, as well as upon the features that distinguished them as literary artists.

Father Knickerbocker was the first literary creation of our country. The little old man in the old black coat and cocked hat who strayed from his lodgings, and was near being advertised for by the police of that day, and who left behind him the curious history that was to...