I believe that gossip can be quite powerful if people are stupid enough to believe in them. Gossip can ruin somebody's reputation, regardless of the fact whether they are true or not - once people hear something bad or juicy about someone, they won't care much whether it really happened or not, but will rather judge that person based on that particular rumor. Sometimes rumors are based on true events, but most of the times they are not - mostly they are just sparked by someone who is jealous of that particular person and wants them to suffer.
The idea this paragraph conveys is that the colonies literature was simple compared to England's literature
In this paragraph, the author compares the literary tradition in England and the literary tradition in the colonies. About this, the main points are:
By the time of the colonization, England had a complex and advanced literary tradition
In the colonies, writers focused on observations rather than on creative or fictional writing
From this, it can be inferred the literature in the colonies was not as complex and advanced as the one in England, and therefore, this literature was simple.
Explanation:
Those people are the ones who I invited to the meeting.