Moses Coit Tyler

Moses Coit Tyler (1835–1900) was an American historian, the founder of the scholarly study of early American literature. Born in Connecticut and educated at Yale, he served briefly as a Congregational minister before becoming professor of English at the University of Michigan and in 1881 professor of American history at Cornell, one of the first such chairs in the country. His History of American Literature, 1607 to 1765 and Literary History of the American Revolution treated colonial writing as a serious subject. He also wrote a biography of Patrick Henry and helped found the American Historical Association.