The introduction by Donald Pizer describes in detail the biographical and historical background of the novel and its critical reputation. The four original essays in the volume not only touch on long-established approaches to Sister Carrie but also reflect a number of the concerns of recent scholarly and critical movements. Each of the essays is a self-standing examination of a major area of interest in the novel, including such topics as the impact of Dreiser's own life on the creation of Carrie and Hurstwood, the relationship of Carrie and the theater, and Dreiser's naturalism and his...

The American (1877) was written the very year Henry James committed himself to making his way as an author outside of America. It thus formed part of the brief that James had to draw up both for and against his countrymen. This collection of original essays casts new light on this and other major aspects of the novel: the French literary influences on James as he gravitated between the genres of the romantic and the realistic novel; the many-layered French political scene that he incorporated into the novel; the complex gender roles of his characters; and the pervasive effect of capitalism...

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. Stouck, Marcia Jacobson, Clare E. Colquitt, and Thomas Yingling, Winesburg is reconsidered in the contexts of the expressionist movement, the American boy-book tradition, the work of Sarah Orne Jewett, and the rise of industrial capitalism. An introduction by John W. Crowley reviews the career of Sherwood Anderson and his assimilation into the literary canon.