A Brief History of American Literature

Written in an informed and accessible by one of the leading authorities in the field, A Brief History of American Literature offers students and general readers alike a concise and thoroughly up–to–date history of the American literary tradition from its origins to the present day. While focusing on the full range of fiction, poetry, drama, and non–fiction that has been incorporated into the mainstream literary canon, Richard Gray also considers the contribution from several other popular American literary traditions, including oral literature, folktales, spirituals, Westerns, detective stories, thrillers, and science fiction. Featured writers include Melville, Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, Eliot, and the works of these major American novelists and poets are discussed in the context of American social and cultural history. Consideration is also given to the myriad ways in which our understanding of American literature has evolved over the past twenty years. Compelling and authoritative, A Brief History of American Literature will prove an invaluable introduction to the full breadth and diversity of the American literary tradition.

Preface and Acknowledgments. 1 The First Americans: American Literature During the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods. Imagining Eden. Writing of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods. 2 Inventing Americas: The Making of American Literature 1800–1865 . Making a Nation. The Making of American Myths. The Making of American Selves. The Making of Many Americas. The Making of an American Fiction and Poetry. 3 Reconstructing the Past, Reimagining the Future: The Development of American Literature 1865–1900. Rebuilding a Nation. The Development of Literary Regionalisms. The Development of Literary Realism and Naturalism. The Development of Women′s Writing. The Development of Many Americas. 4 Making It New: The Emergence of Modern American Literature 1900–1945. Changing National Identities. Between Victorianism and Modernism. The Inventions of Modernism. Traditionalism, Politics, and Prophecy. Community and Identity. Mass Culture and the Writer. 5 Negotiating the American Century: American Literature since 1945. Towards a Transnational Nation. Formalists and Confessionals. Public and Private Histories. Beats, Prophets, and Aesthetes. The Art and Politics of Race. Realism and Its Discontents. Language and Genre. Creating New Americas. Index.

Richard Gray is Professor of Literature at the University of Essex and former Distinguished Visiting Professor at a number of universities in the United States. He is the first specialist in American literature to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy and has published over a dozen books on the topic, including the award–winning   Writing the South  (Ideas of an American Region (1986) and The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography (1944).  His History of  American Literature is widely considered to be one of the standard works on the subject.