Use the Internet to research the life and work of a major American author from this time period (writing in the early 1800s through the years just before the Civil War)

Use the Internet to research the life and work of a major American author from this time period (writing in the early 1800s through the years just before the Civil War).  Based on the author's writings, and your readings of the textbook, create a .docx document that explains how this author was influenced by his or her times.  Would his or her work have been at all the same if they lived at a different time, and if they had been writing today, what do you think they would have written about?  Find internet biographies of your author (scholarly ones, please!), and provide a short sample of something they wrote that you were able to find on the Web.  Please be careful about the time period: remember, early 1800s until right before the Civil War.  This report should be about two pages long, not including the Works Cited page, and it should not contain more than half a page of quotation. Sources should be cited in footnotes.

Some ideas:

Ralph Waldo Emerson

John James Audubon

Henry David Thoreau

Herman Melville

Frederick Douglass

James Fenimore Cooper

Edgar Allen Poe

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Margaret Fuller

Emily Dickinson

Fanny Crosby

There are plenty of others, too!