Reading the American Novel 1780 – 1865

The decades following America′s emergence as a free nation were accompanied by a wealth of fiction writing. But what exactly did America′s earliest novelists write about? And how do we interpret their works today?

Reading the American Novel 1780 1865, explores the diverse fiction produced in the United States from the late 18th century until the onset of the Civil War. The book provides an overview of early fiction along with in–depth examinations of specific novels, asking how they establish and develop grounds of inquiry. The major authors are featured, including Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, alongside less familiar writers such as Fanny Fern, Caroline Kirkland, George Lippard, and Catharine Sedgwick. A chapter dedicated solely to popular women′s fiction explores works by Louisa May Alcott, Maria Cummins, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Susan B. Warner, and Harriet Wilson. The social and historical contexts of the time are considered in order to enhance the reader s understanding of the stories that evolved to explain those events and help Americans define themselves. The book also explores questions of identity about the novel, its 19th–century readers, and the emerging structure of the United States as an important backdrop to understanding American fiction.

Reading the American Novel 1780 1865 offers fascinating insights into the evolution of America′s most popular literary genre.

Acknowledgments xv

1 Introduction to the American Novel: From Charles Brockden rown s Gothic Novels to Caroline Kirkland s Wilderness 1

2 Historical Codes in Literary Analysis: The Writing Projects of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Stoddard, and Hannah Crafts 23

3 Women, Blood, and Contract: Land Claims in Lydia Maria Child, Catharine Sedgwick, and James Fenimore Cooper 45

4 Black Rivers, Red Letters, and White Whales: Mobility and Desire in Catharine Williams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville 67

5 Promoting the Nation in James Fenimore Cooper and Harriet Beecher Stowe 91

6 Women s Worlds in the Nineteenth–Century Novel: Susan B. Warner, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Fanny Fern, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Harriet Wilson, and Louisa May Alcott 119

Afterword 151

Further Reading 165

Index 171

Shirley Samuels is Professor of English and American Studies at Cornell University. She is the author of Romances of the Republic (1996) and Facing America (2004), and editor of The Culture of Sentiment (1992) and The Companion to American Fiction, 1780 1865 (2004).

Named CHOICE Outstanding Title for 2012

Perhaps only a scholar of Samuel s perspicacity could produce a work that treads familiar textual ground with such startling insight, a work that moves elegantly between its meta–critical concerns and the ingenuity of its close readings.  Summing Up: Essential.  All readers.   (Choice, 1 October 2012)