The American (1877) was written the very year Henry James committed himself to making his way as an author outside America. It thus formed part of the brief that James had to draw up both for and against his countrymen.  Meer

The essays in this volume represent a wide range of approaches to one of the most popular of all American novels. Michael Bell re-examines the crucial issue of romanticism versus realism in the book.  Meer

The introduction to this volume outlines the critical history of the novel from the moralising reactions of Hawthorne's contemporaries, through the assessments of writers such as Henry James and D.  Meer

Thomas Pynchon's novel, The Crying of Lot 49, is widely recognized as a significant contemporary work that frames the desire for meaning and the quest for knowledge within the social and political contexts of the fifties and sixties in America.  Meer

Sister Carrie (1900), Theodore Dreiser's first novel, is one of the seminal works in American literature because of Dreiser's ground-breaking dramatization of the tragic life led by men and women in the modern American city.  Meer

Sixty years after its first publication, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio continues to stand as a 'classic' of modernist American fiction. In original new essays by David H.  Meer

While William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury met with only limited success when published in 1929, it since has become one of the most popular of Faulkner's novels, serving as a litmus paper upon which critical approaches have tested themselves.  Meer

Sister Carrie (1900), Theodore Dreiser's first novel, is one of the seminal works in American literature because of Dreiser's ground-breaking dramatization of the tragic life led by men and women in the modern American city.  Meer

Sixty years after its first publication, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio continues to stand as a 'classic' of modernist American fiction. In original new essays by David H.  Meer

When first published in 1929, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms was decried as a vulgar novel, and was actually banned in Boston. In his extensive introduction, Scott Donaldson explains this initial reception, and then traces the change in perception toward the novel.  Meer

New Essays on Walden reviews Thoreau's classic from four important perspectives. Lawrence Buell explains how decisions by Thoreau's publisher combined with promotion of Thoreau by early Thoreauvians, literary critics and reviewers turned Walden into a classic.  Meer

Light in August (1932) is one of William Faulkner's most important, most challenging, and most widely studied novels, demanding to be approached from many angles and with a variety of critical and scholarly skills.  Meer

Light in August (1932) is one of William Faulkner's most important, most challenging, and most widely studied novels, demanding to be approached from many angles and with a variety of critical and scholarly skills.  Meer

Increased interest in the role of women and minorities in establishing the canon of American literature has led to renewed interest in Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Meer

The Sun Also Rises (1926) was Hemingway's first novel and is widely considered to be the most important of his longer works of fiction. Written in an accessible style by prominent scholars, this collection of essays provides helpful and valuable insight for general readers and Hemingway specialists alike.  Meer

The American Novel series provides students of American literature with introductory critical guides to the great works of American fiction by giving details of the novel's composition, publication history and contemporary reception.  Meer

The Portrait of a Lady is arguably Henry James's most appealing and accessible novel. The introduction to this volume of specially written essays, first published in 1990, situates the novel in its cultural and historical context: its treatment of a modern woman 'affronting' her destiny, its relation to the contemporary controversy over 'morality' in fiction, its use of an Italian setting, and its late nineteenth century elegiac mood.  Meer

James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, has gained a wide readership and much critical acclaim since its publication in 1953. While most critics have seen it as focusing exclusively on the African American fundamentalist church and its effect on characters brought up within its tradition, these scholars posit that issues of homosexuality, the social construction of identity, anthropological conceptions of community, and the quest for an artistic identity provide more elucidating approaches to the novel.  Meer

White Noise, the story of a professor of Hitler Studies and his family was DeLillo's breakthrough book and has received much attention and critical acclaim.  Meer

This 1999 book provides a multifaceted introduction to Nobel Prize-winner Saul Bellow's most widely read, respected, and taught work of fiction, Seize the Day.  Meer