Bücher der Reihe Historical Guides to American Authors

Edith Wharton stands at a particular historical crossroads between sentimental lady writer and modern professional author. These essays expand our sense of Wharton as a novelist of manners and demonstrate her engagement with issues of her day.

This brilliant, original collection of essays on Melville's life and writing makes the case for his centrality both to nineteenth-century writing in America and also to America's understanding of itself. No American literary artist has ever known his fellow citizens in greater depth.

A Historical Guide to James Fenimore Cooper features new critical essays by noted American literature scholars, Gerald Kennedy, John P. McWilliams, Dana Nelson, and Barbara Mann, as well as a brief biography by authorized Cooper biographer Wayne Franklin and a survey of Cooper scholarship and criticism and bibliography by Jeffrey Walker.