The story of New England letters between the Revolution and the Civil War reads in many ways like a straightforward narrative of growth and improvement. At the start, we find literature composed by a small number of genteel amateurs in Connecticut and eastern Massachusetts, all minor figures by any high standard, confining themselves to poetry and nonfictional prose. In fiction and drama, hardly anything had yet appeared, and nothing memorable. New England's major towns, mostly scattered along the Atlantic Coast from Portland to New Haven, had newspapers that local scribblers used as outlets but no literary magazines and no publishing industry as such. Circulation of books and pamphlets was for the most part local.

By 1865 the situation had changed dramatically. Spread throughout every New England state, although concentrated especially in the Boston area, were hundreds of practicing creative writers, some of whom even earned their living from literature. The best had produced work in every genre (except drama) that today is recognized as excellent. Literary institutions were solidly in place.