During the 1960s, such works as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem were cited as examples of the "new journalism." True stories that read like novels, they combined the journalist's task of factual reporting with the art of fictional narration.

Yet as John C. Hartsock shows in this revealing study, the roots of this distinctive form of writing -- whether called new journalism, literary journalism, or creative nonfiction -- can be traced at least as far back as the late nineteenth century. In the decades following the American Civil War, Stephen...

This wide-ranging collection of critical essays on literary journalism addresses the shifting border between fiction and non-fiction, literature and journalism.

"Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century" addresses general and historical issues, explores questions of authorial intent and the status of the territory between literature and journalism, and offers a case study of Mary McCarthy s 1953 piece, "Artists in Uniform," a classic of literary journalism.

Sims offers a thought-provoking study of the nature of perception and the truth, as well as issues facing journalism today."