American · 1906–1986
Henry Nash Smith (1906-1986) was an American literary scholar and one of the founders of American Studies. Born in Dallas, Texas, he earned his doctorate at Harvard and taught at Southern Methodist University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of California, Berkeley, where he also chaired the English department. His best-known book, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950), traced how images of the frontier shaped American thought and policy, and it helped establish the myth-and-symbol approach to the study of culture. He also wrote Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer (1962) and Mark Twain's Fable of Progress (1964), and he edited Twain's papers as literary executor and as an editor at the Mark Twain Papers in Berkeley. Smith treated popular fiction as evidence worth reading closely, alongside canonical works. His methods have drawn criticism, but Virgin Land remains a standard text in the field.