<P> Depression era writers included John Steinbeck, notable for his novel The Grapes of Wrath . Henry Miller assumed a distinct place in American Literature in the 1930s when his semi-autobiographical novels were banned from the US . From the end of World War II until the early 1970s many popular works in modern American literature were produced, like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird . America's involvement in World War II influenced works such as Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Joseph Heller's Catch - 22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse - Five (1969). The main literary movement since the 1970s has been postmodernism, and since the late twentieth century ethnic and minority literature has sharply increased . </P> <P> Because of the large immigration to Boston in the 1630s, the articulation of Puritan ideals, and the early establishment of a college and a printing press in Cambridge, the New England colonies have often been regarded as the center of early American literature . However, the first European settlements in North America had been founded elsewhere many years earlier . Towns older than Boston include the Spanish settlements at Saint Augustine and Santa Fe, the Dutch settlements at Albany and New Amsterdam, as well as the English colony of Jamestown in present - day Virginia . During the colonial period, the printing press was active in many areas, from Cambridge and Boston to New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis . </P> <P> The dominance of the English language was not inevitable . The first item printed in Pennsylvania was in German and was the largest book printed in any of the colonies before the American Revolution . Spanish and French had two of the strongest colonial literary traditions in the areas that now comprise the United States, and discussions of early American literature commonly include texts by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Samuel de Champlain alongside English language texts by Thomas Harriot and John Smith . Moreover, we are now aware of the wealth of oral literary traditions already existing on the continent among the numerous different Native American groups . Political events, however, would eventually make English the lingua franca for the colonies at large as well as the literary language of choice . For instance, when the English conquered New Amsterdam in 1664, they renamed it New York and changed the administrative language from Dutch to English . </P> <P> From 1696 to 1700, only about 250 separate items were issued from the major printing presses in the American colonies . This is a small number compared to the output of the printers in London at the time . London printers published materials written by New England authors, so the body of American literature was larger than what was published in North America . However, printing was established in the American colonies before it was allowed in most of England . In England, restrictive laws had long confined printing to four locations, where the government could monitor what was published: London, York, Oxford, and Cambridge . Because of this, the colonies ventured into the modern world earlier than their provincial English counterparts . </P>

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