An American Childhood

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard wrote the autobiographical memoir An American Childhood (1987). In this memoir, Dillard (born in 1945) describes her intellectual development, from her first true intellectual awakening, at 5 years old, through her busy and happy pre-teen years and her turbulent adolescence, to her acceptance at a prestigious private college at age 18. An exploration of her childhood during the 1950s, this memoir operates as a coming-of-age story in which the author awakens to the world and its possibilities. A keen and observant mind, Dillard advocates such an awakening for all of her readers.

This intellectual awakening—together with Dillard’s description of the land, its history, its rocks and stones, and its creatures—ties Dillard to the American Romantic period of American letters, particularly to Transcendentalism. The major contribution of Transcendentalism remains the view that divinity permeates nature and humanity, joining them together. Dillard’s prose, with its direct tributes to and echoes of Thoreau’s Walden and Emerson’s lyrical essays, participates in a modern usage of this unique American philosophy and imagination that flowered during the 1830s and 1840s.

Dillard attended public school through fifth grade, then attended a private school called the Ellis School.