The Knickerbocker Group was a somewhat indistinct group" of writers, notably Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant, who were American pioneers in the literary fields of general literature, novels, and poetry and journalism, respectively. Other talented poets, playwrights, writers, novelists, journalists, and editors joined this writer's club, dubbed the "Knickerbocker Group" after Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York and pen name, "Diedrich Knickerbocker".
Other members of this group included James Kirke Paulding, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Joseph Rodman Drake, Robert Charles Sands, Lydia Maria Child, Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, and Nathaniel Parker Willis. Many were frequent contributors to the literary magazine The Knickerbocker under editor Lewis Gaylord Clark.