Cornelius Mathews

Behemoth Cornelius Mathews

Cornelius Mathews (October 28, 1817 - March 25, 1889), was an American writer, best known for his crucial role in the formation of a literary group known as Young America in the late 1830s, with editor Evert Duyckinck and author William Gilmore Simms. Mathews was born on October 28, 1817, in Port Chester, New York to Abijah Mathews and Catherine Van Cott. He attended Columbia College, graduated New York University in 1834. He then attended law school and passed the New York bar in 1837. At the time, American literature was generally regarded as necessarily inferior to the British, and American authors were encouraged to follow English models closely. This at least was the view espoused by the literary elite of New York, who tended to orbit the influential and conservative editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, Lewis Gaylord Clark. Mathews vehemently disagreed, and called for a new literary style that would express a distinctly American identity, although this style was not to be a populist or demotic one.