"Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition provides an omnibus account of American literature and its ever-evolving field of study. Emphasizing the ways in which American literature has been in transition ever since its founding, this revisionary series examines four phases of American literary history, focusing on the movements, forms, and media that developed from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The mutable nature of American literature is explored throughout these volumes, which consider a diverse and dynamic set of authors, texts, and methods. Encompassing the full range of today's literary scholarship, this series is an essential guide to the study of nineteenth-century American literature and culture"--

"Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition provides an omnibus account of American literature and its ever-evolving field of study. Emphasizing the ways in which American literature has been in transition ever since its founding, this revisionary series examines four phases of American literary history, focusing on the movements, forms, and media that developed from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The mutable nature of American literature is explored throughout these volumes, which consider a diverse and dynamic set of authors, texts, and methods. Encompassing the full range of today's literary scholarship, this series is an essential guide to the study of nineteenth-century American literature and culture"--

The essays in American Literature in Transition, 1820-1860 offer a new approach to the antebellum era, one that frames the age not merely as the precursor to the Civil War but as indispensable for understanding present crises around such issues as race, imperialism, climate change, and the role of literature in American society. The essays make visible and usable the period's fecund imagined futures, futures that certainly included disunion but not only disunion. Tracing the historical contexts, literary forms and formats, global coordinates, and present reverberations of antebellum literature and culture, the essays in this volume build on existing scholarship while indicating exciting new avenues for research and teaching. Taken together, the essays in this volume make this era's literature relevant for a new generation of students and scholars.

Between 1851 and 1877, the U.S. underwent a whirlwind of change. This volume offers a fresh account of this important era, assessing the many developments - both major and minor - that transformed American literature. In a wide range of chapters, scholars re-examine literary history before, during, and after the Civil War, revealing significant changes not only in how literature is written but also in how it is conceived, distributed, and consumed. Cutting across literary periods that are typically considered separate and distinct, and incorporating an array of methods and approaches, this volume discloses the Long Civil War to be an era of ongoing struggle and cultural contestation. It thus captures the dynamism of this period in American literary history as well as its ever-evolving field of study.

"Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition provides an omnibus account of American literature and its ever-evolving field of study. Emphasizing the ways in which American literature has been in transition ever since its founding, this revisionary series examines four phases of American literary history, focusing on the movements, forms, and media that developed from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The mutable nature of American literature is explored throughout these volumes, which consider a diverse and dynamic set of authors, texts, and methods. Encompassing the full range of today's literary scholarship, this series is an essential guide to the study of nineteenth-century American literature and culture"--

In the mid-nineteenth century writers such as Hawthorne and Melville produced works of fiction that even today help define American literature. In this work of innovative literary history, Jonathan Arac explains what made this remarkable creativity possible and what it accomplished.