This classic work reinterprets four major American novelists of the nineteenth century in terms of their approach to the society of their time. Winner of the Porter Prize and the Egleston History Prize—both awarded by Yale University—the book marks a radical departure in the understanding of American literature and culture, and the novel as a genre, and will be useful to scholars and students. James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and ...
