Writing within the conventions of the European sublime was often problematic for 19th-century travel writers who found Niagara had no Old World precedent. Frances and Anthony Trollope, Dickens, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Twain, and Henry James all made important contributions to the literary development of the Fall's treatment in the 19th century, when they first became widely written upon, painted, and commodified after the 1825 completion of the Erie Canal. This article explores the importance of these authors' points of view of the cataract in relation to silence, guidebook empiricism, guidebook Romanticism, irreverence, and the problematic prospect of coming to terms with the Falls as a commercial and tourist destination.

Writing within the conventions of the European sublime was often problematic for 19th-century travel writers who discovered that Niagara had no Old World precedent. I am concerned here with the development of the Falls' treatment in the 19th century when they first became widely written upon, painted, and commercially exploited after the 1825 completion of the Erie Canal. In what follows, I explore the importance of various 'points of view,' a term often used by Henry James as a device to describe a perspective both visual and thematic. These points of view will take in subjects that include silence, guidebook empiricism, guidebook Romanticism, nationalism, irreverence and an artistic acceptance of the Falls as a tourist destination.