1. Nathaniel Ward, George Alsop and Benjamin Franklin are the representative humor writers in the colonial days, whose humorous works indicate the following similar qualities: they are based on pragmatism; they show an anti-knowledge tendency; they frequently employ exaggeration to manifest the national confidence; they combine humor and satire to reveal the evils of society and human beings; they use debasement and dialect to make their humor native and public.
殖民地时期的幽默作家主要包括纳撒尼尔沃德、乔治艾尔索普、本杰明富兰克林等，他们的创作体现出一些共同的特点：以实用主义为哲学基础，具有鲜明的反知倾向；大量运用夸张手法，充分显现出美利坚民族的自信心；将幽默与讽刺相结合，揭示社会和人类的弊病；运用降格手法以及方言但语，使幽默具有本土化和大众性特点。
2. Webster, the lexicographer; Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, Parkman, the historians; Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, William Greenleaf Whittier, Walt Whitman, the poets; Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Brockden Brown, JK Paulding, Bret Harte, the novelists; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the essayists and philosophers; Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, the humorists--these made up a glorious company that shed lustre on American literature wherever the english tongue was spoken.
韦伯斯特的词典编纂，普雷斯科特，莫特利，班克罗夫特，巴克曼，历史学家，诗人朗费罗，爱伦坡，詹姆斯拉塞尔洛威尔，威廉绿叶蒂尔，沃尔特惠特曼，诗人，华盛顿欧文，库柏，霍桑，查尔斯布罗克登布朗，JK保尔丁，布雷特哈特的小说家；奥利弗温德尔霍姆斯，爱默生的散文作家和哲学家，马克吐温和阿蒂默斯区的幽默大师-这些行动的光荣公司，阐明美国文学的光泽哪里是讲英语的舌头了。