I have been thinking about literature lately. I would guess that everyone agrees that modern "English" literature basically starts with William Shakespeare. The bard really started literature as we know it, even though he was a playwright. The British begat Jane Austen, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Dickens, R.D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore [my personal favorite], Thomas Hardy, and Robert Louis Stevenson. I must mention that MY favorite author from the early "English" ones was Sir Walter Scott (a Scotsman) … I devoured his books in my early days ... Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, and others.
      American literature started basically with James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Nathanial Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain. As Hemingway said … “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” Speaking of Hemingway … these are all MY opinions … except for "The Old Man and The Sea", I think that Ernest would have been a better screenwriter than a novelist. He was great at writing vignettes and setting moods, but (for me) his novels were disjointed, semi-biographical, mis-mashes. I did appreciate his early novels although I feel the same about them. I did like Hemingway better than F. Scott Fitzgerald ... whom, I feel, is the most overrated author who ever lived. Early 20th century writers that I did appreciate more were Faulkner, Steinbeck, Harper Lee, Carson McCullers, Ray Bradbury, and Dashiell Hammett.    Two authors (modern) whom I think have the best command of prose in American writing, albeit in different ways, (and maybe the best prose writers I've ever read) are James Lee Burke and Craig Johnson. Some other REALLY good modern writers I find interesting, readable, and informative are Martin Cruz Smith, Len Deighton, Frederick Forsythe, John Le Carre (David John Moore Cornwell), Ian Rankin, and P.D. (Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park) James.
   Feel free to let me know what you think of my ranting.