ABSTRACT
In 1789, Noah Webster made a plea to 'establish a national language, as well as a national government'. This chapter shows that Americans had also developed a wide variety of literary types and tastes. The English colonies served as a refuge for a wide variety of ethnic and religious groups. Throughout the long years during which American English was developing, colonial men and women produced an enormous, varied, practical, andon the whole sophisticated literature. During this century most colonial towns organized public, or semi-public, libraries. Just as religion, education, and other institutions changed to fit the new American environment, the English language itself began to change. The Reverend Edward Taylor composed a series of "Meditations" over a period of forty years, which interpreted Puritan theology and his own personal acceptance and reaction to it. The first colonial newspaper was Public Occurrences, which published one issue at Boston in 1690 and was immediately shut down by the authorities.
