Accounts of the rise of American literature often start in the 1850s with a cluster of "great American novels"—Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Melville’s

Updated throughout and with much new material, A History of American Literature, Second Edition, is the most up-to-date and comprehensive survey available of th

In her comprehensive study of American sketch writing, Kristic Hamilton gives new insight into the powers of mass-market intimacy more personal and home-like th

Volume I of The Cambridge History of American Literature was originally published in 1997, and covers the colonial and early national periods and discusses the