male authors, Matthiessen unwittingly prefigured in his book what later readers would dispute and labor to correct." Some critics argue that literature written by women during this period was not as popular as first thought, and that it took a distant second place in popularity to works written by men. Matthiessen and other scholars are even known to exclude women and minority authors, especially African Americans. Critics also argue that there is no separate style or genre, such as sentimental-domestic fiction, distinguished by gender. However, other critics point out that the most read authors of the time were women, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Fanny Fern, and criticize Matthiessen for not including women in the original canon. The demographic exclusivity of the American Renaissance began eroding among scholars toward the end of the twentieth century. They have included Emily Dickinson in the canon; she started writing poetry in the late 1850s. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) rose to a prominent reputation in the late 1970s. African-American literature, including slave narratives by such masters as Frederick Douglass, and early novels by William Wells Brown, has gained increasing recognition. Notable authors Most often associated with the American Renaissance movement are Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men and Self-Reliance, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Henry David Thoreau's Walden, and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Most of the main writers associated with the American Renaissance were actually rather unknown during this time and had small followings. Other authors were later added to this list and found to have contributed to this movement. These include: Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and John Greenleaf Whittier among others. References History of literature in the United States Cultural history of the United States Literary criticism 19th-century American literature