Cornelius Mathews

Behemoth: a Legend; Or, the Mound-builders (Dodo Press) Cornelius Mathews

Cornelius Mathews (1817-1889) is best known for his crucial role in the formation of a literary group known as Young America in the late 1830s, with editor Evert Duyckinck and author William Gilmore Simms. At the time, American literature was generally regarded as inferior to the British, and American authors were encouraged to follow English models closely. Mathews vehemently disagreed, and called for a new literary style that would express a distinctly American identity, although this style was not to be a populist or demotic one. Stylistically, Mathews favoured an approach that emphasized the cosmopolitan sweep and diversity of American society. For two years (1840-1842), Mathews and Duyckinck wrote for and co-edited Young America's uneven journal, Arcturus. Throughout the period of his principle literary activity, the 1840s and 1850s, Mathews contributed to and/or helped to edit several American periodicals, including the New-Yorker, the Comic World, the American Monthly Magazine and the New York Reveille. His works include: The Indian Fairy Book (1869) and Chanticleer: A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family (1850).