1. A literary trend where writers depicted life and people as they were. They wrote about everyday activities and experiences.

2.  Realism explained why ordinary people behave the way that they do  Writers moved away from Romanticism and Transcendentalism in part due to the Civil War (1861-1865)  People had a romanticized view of warfare, believing that it would be full of glory and bravery, but these attitudes changed quickly  People abandoned their romantic idealism after the bloody war. Popular literature reflected that change, and we got realism.

3.  Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn  Stephen Crane: The Red Badge of Courage, “The Open Boat” (died at 28 of TB)  Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of a Slave  Ambrose Bierce: “ An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”  Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “The Yellow Wallpaper”

4. The Gleaners, Jean-Francois Millet

5. McSorley's Bar, John French Sloan

6.  Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address (1863); slavery was soon abolished  The Civil War divided the country; first war documented by photographs  First transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869  Emily Dickinson wrote 366 poems in 1862

7.  In post-Civil War years, the US was growing so quickly, Americans felt that they were losing their regional identities. People were proud of the things that made them unique Writers tried to capture and record the character of the country’s distinct regions  Ex: The use of regional dialect of the South in Huck Finn

8.  What makes a region unique?