Cornelius Mathews

Cornelius Mathews was a nineteenth-century American author, editor, and advocate for a distinctly national literature. He worked closely with Evert A. Duyckinck, co-founding the literary periodical Arcturus, and belonged to the circle later called Young America. Wakondah, the Master of Life is a long poem shaped around an Indigenous American theme, while Poems on Man gathers verse concerned with life under the American republic. Mathews also wrote fiction, drama, criticism, and adaptations of material collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. His career connects poetry with the energetic magazine culture and copyright debates of antebellum New York.