"Richard Gray's real achievement is somehow to have compressed more than 400 years of thrillingly rich literary history between two covers.„ (Literary Review)“This book is the first comprehensive, single volume history ofAmerican literature since The Columbia Literary History of theUnited States edited by Elliott Emory and published sixteen yearsago. It is a puzzle, given the extraordinary interest in Americanliterature at home and abroad, that so few full histories ofAmerican literature have been published. Consider the fact that theColumbia history arrived nearly four decades after R. E. Spiller'sLiterary History of the United States. What makes Gray's book soextraordinary is that it supercedes the Spiller and Emory texts innearly every respect, and even challenges the supremacy of thetitanic (this pun is intentional), multi-volume, still-evolvingCambridge History of American Literature. How Gray managed to socaptivatingly capture the depth and breadth of so complex aliterature in under a thousand pages is worth considering. [...]Richard Gray possesses the most balanced scholarship of the entirerange of American literature I ever read. [...] This is the firsthistory of American literature fully worthy of themulti-dimensionality of its subject."
--Norman Weinstein, Boise State University
A History of American Literature
von Richard GrayUpdated throughout and with much new material, A History ofAmerican Literature, Second Edition, is the most up-to-date andcomprehensive survey available of the myriad forms of AmericanLiterature from pre-Columbian times to the present.
* The most comprehensive and up-to-date history of Americanliterature available today
* Covers fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction, as well asother forms of literature including folktale, spirituals, thedetective story, the thriller, and science fiction
* Explores the plural character of American literature, includingthe contributions made by African American, Native American, Hispanic and Asian American writers
* Considers how our understanding of American literature haschanged over the past? thirty years
* Situates American literature in the contexts of Americanhistory, politics and society
* Offers an invaluable introduction to American literature forstudents at all levels, academic and general readers
* The most comprehensive and up-to-date history of Americanliterature available today
* Covers fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction, as well asother forms of literature including folktale, spirituals, thedetective story, the thriller, and science fiction
* Explores the plural character of American literature, includingthe contributions made by African American, Native American, Hispanic and Asian American writers
* Considers how our understanding of American literature haschanged over the past? thirty years
* Situates American literature in the contexts of Americanhistory, politics and society
* Offers an invaluable introduction to American literature forstudents at all levels, academic and general readers
