A Companion to American Fiction, 1865-1914 is a groundbreaking collection of essays written by leading critics for a wide audience of students, scholars, and interested general readers.

List of Illustrations x Notes on Contributors xi Acknowledgments xviii Editors' Introduction 1 Robert Paul Lamb and G. R. Thompson PART I Historical Traditions and Genres 13 1 The Practice and Promotion of American Literary Realism 15 Nancy Glazener 2 Excitement and Consciousness in the Romance Tradition 35 William J. Scheick 3 The Sentimental and Domestic Traditions, 1865-1900 53 Gregg Camfield 4 Morality, Modernity, and "Malarial Restlessness": American Realism in its Anglo-European Contexts 77 Winfried Fluck 5 American Literary Naturalism 96 Christophe Den Tandt 6 American Regionalism: Local Color, National Literature, Global Circuits 119 June Howard 7 Women Authors and the Roots of American Modernism 140 Linda Wagner-Martin 8 The Short Story and the Short-Story Sequence, 1865-1914 149 J. Gerald Kennedy PART II Contexts and Themes 175 9 Ecological Narrative and Nature Writing 177 S. K. Robisch 10 "The Frontier Story": The Violence of Literary History 201 Christine Bold 11 Native American Narratives: Resistance and Survivance 222 Gerald Vizenor 12 Representing the Civil War and Reconstruction: From Uncle Tom to Uncle Remus 240 Kathleen Diffley 13 Engendering the Canon: Women's Narratives, 1865-1914 260 Grace Farrell 14 Confronting the Crisis: African American Narratives 279 Dickson D. Bruce, Jr. 15 Fiction's Many Cities 296 Sidney H. Bremer 16 Mapping the Culture of Abundance: Literary Narratives and Consumer Culture 318 Sarah Way Sherman 17 Secrets of the Master's Deed Box: Narrative and Class 340 Christopher P. Wilson 18 Ethnic Realism 356 Robert M. Dowling 19 Darwin, Science, and Narrative 377 Bert Bender 20 Writing in the "Vulgar Tongue": Law and American Narrative 395 William E. Moddelmog 21 Planning Utopia 411 Thomas Peyser 22 American Children's Narrative as Social Criticism, 1865-1914 428 Gwen Athene Tarbox PART III Major Authors 449 23 An Idea of Order at Concord: Soul and Society in the Mind of Louisa May Alcott 451 John Matteson 24 America Can Break Your Heart: On the Significance of Mark Twain 468 Robert Paul Lamb 25 William Dean Howells and the Bourgeois Quotidian: Affection, Skepticism, Disillusion 499 Michael Anesko 26 Henry James in a New Century 518 John Carlos Rowe 27 Toward a Modernist Aesthetic: The Literary Legacy of Edith Wharton 536 Candace Waid and Clare Colquitt 28 Sensations of Style: The Literary Realism of Stephen Crane 557 William E. Cain 29 Theodore Dreiser and the Force of the Personal 572 Clare Virginia Eby Index 587