A Portrait of America, 1830

p Life in America was written by Thomas Low Nichols in the 1830s , it was a text that captured the life and the situation of the country some years after the 1812 war . It is somewhat hard to establish the precise genre of the text , since the literary styles were somewhat different in those days . The specific term here is somewhat , since all the literary genres that exist today also existed then , but some writing styles that existed in mid 19th century do not really exist anymore and the text by Nichols might

just belong to a writing style that is gone . Essay writing in its original definition could be described as a writing of a report (e .g about a country or a situation ) in a rather poetic manner . This kind of writing was very popular in the 19th century since much of the period 's literature was inspired by epic works , struggles , revolutions and the romantic spirit . Revolutionary poems and this kind of epic journalism ' were very popular . The style to which the Nichols text bears such resemblance had a close relation to what used to called Travel Writing in several European languages . It is similar to the descriptive or epic journalism but it as an account of a journey by a writer or a journalist , to some extent an equivalent to a foreign correspondent nowadays . Before the telegraph that was the only way to be kept in tune with the news abroad , the correspondent would send weekly...