What critic coined the phrase the “American Renaissance”?

Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50) coined the phrase the “American Renaissance”, in his work The American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941).

The phrase refers to a time in the mid-nineteenth century that saw a flourishing of talent in American letters.

Francis Otto Matthiessen (1902-50), in his work The
American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of