The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 6: The American Novel 1879-1940

656 Pages·2014·5.25 MB·English

by  Priscilla Wald

the oxford history of the novel in english
The American Novel 1870–1940
The Oxford History of the Novel in English
general editor: patrick parrinder
advisory editor (us volumes): jonathan arac
Volumes Published and in Preparation
1. Prose Fiction in English from the Origins of Print to 1750, edited by Thomas Keymer
2. English and British Fiction 1750–1820, edited by Peter Garside and Karen O’Brien
3. The Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820–1880, edited by John Kucich and Jenny Bourne
Taylor
4. The Reinvention of the British and Irish Novel 1880–1940, edited by Patrick Parrinder
and Andrzej Ga˛siorek
5. The American Novel to 1870, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy and Leland S. Person
6. The American Novel 1870–1940, edited by Priscilla Wald and Michael A. Elliott
7. British and Irish Fiction since 1940, edited by Peter Boxall and Bryan Cheyette
8. American Fiction since 1940, edited by Cyrus R. K. Patell and Deborah Lindsay
Williams
9. World Fiction in English to 1950, edited by Ralph Crane, Jane Stafford, and Mark
Williams
10. The Novel in English in Asia since 1945
11. The Novel in Africa and the Atlantic World since 1950, edited by Simon Gikandi
12. The Novel in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific since 1950,
edited by Coral Ann Howells, Paul Sharrad, and Gerry Turcotte
the oxford history of the novel in english
Volume Six
The American Novel
1870–1940
edited by
Priscilla Wald and Michael A. Elliott
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide.
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
© Oxford University Press 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the
appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The American novel, 1870–1940 / edited by Priscilla Wald and Michael A. Elliott.
p. cm. — (The Oxford history of the novel in English; v. 6)
“The Oxford history of the novel in English; General Editor: Patrick Parrinder; Consulting Editor (US volumes):
Jonathan Arac” — Title page verso.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–538534–2
1. American fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. American fiction—20th century—History and
criticism. 3. Literature and society—United States—History—19th century. 4. Literature and society—United
States—History—20th century. 5. National characteristics, American, in literature. 6. Transnationalism
in literature. I. Wald, Priscilla, editor. II. Elliott, Michael A., editor. III. Parrinder, Patrick, series.
IV. Arac, Jonathan, 1945– editor.
PS377.A545 2013
813’.409—dc23 2013022470
9780195385342
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Contributors xi
General Editor’s Preface xiii
Introduction: By Priscilla Wald and Michael A. Elliott xv
I: The Business of Fiction
1. Textual Commodities and Authorial Celebrities 3
By Sarah Robbins
2. The Business of Publishing American Novels 20
By Catherine Turner
3. American Readers and Their Novels 36
By Amy L. Blair
II: The Novel, 1870–1914
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 57
By Jonathan Arac
5. The Novel and the Reconstruction Amendments 69
By Jeannine Marie Delombard
6. Plessy and the Novel 86
By Edlie Wong
7. Documenting the Real 103
By Augusta Rohrbach
8. Journalism and the Urban Novel 120
By Betsy Klimasmith
9. Geographic Fictions and the American Novel 135
By Stephanie Foote
vi contents
10. Science, Medicine, Technology, and the Novel, 1860–1915 151
By Jane F. Thrailkill
11. The Religious Novel 168
By Claudia Stokes
12. The Spanish-American War, US Expansion, and the Novel 184
By Gretchen Murphy
13. The Immigrant Novel 200
By Joshua L. Miller
14. The American Novel beyond English 218
By Orm Øverland
15. Henry James, the Novel, and the Mediascapes of Modernity 234
By Jonathan Freedman
16. The Novel and the Early Cinema 255
By John Michael
III: Genre Fiction and the Novel
17. The Dime Novel 273
By David Kazanjian
18. Serial Fiction and the Novel 289
By Jared Gardner
19. Fictionalizing Children, Children’s Fiction 304
By Caroline Levander
20. The American Bestseller 319
By Leonard Cassuto
21. Crime and Detective Fiction after the Great War 336
By Lee Horsley
22. Comics and the Novel 353
By Michael Moon
23. Science Fiction in the United States 370
By Gerry Canavan
IV. The Novel, 1915–1940
24. Modernism and the International Novel 389
By Mark Scroggins
25. The Novel and the Rise of Social Science 405
By Susan Hegeman
26. The Native Novel 423
By Sean Kicummah Teuton
contents vii
27. The Novel after the Great War 436
By Paul Giles
28. The Harlem Renaissance Novel 453
By Zita Nunes
29. Faulkner and the World Culture of the Global South 469
By Ramón Saldívar
30. The Depression and the Novel 484
By Sonnet Retman
31. Hollywood and the American Novel 501
By Patrick Jagoda
32. Native Son and Diasporic Modernity 517
By Mikko Tuhkanen
V: Critical Understandings
33. Mass Culture, the Novel, and the American Left 533
By Benjamin Balthaser and Shelley Streeby
34. The Making of American Literature 549
By Elizabeth Renker
35. The Future of the Novel and Public Criticism in Mid-Century America 566
By Paula Rabinowitz
Secondary Bibliography: Quoted Sources 583
Index of American Novelists, 1870–1940 605
General Index 614

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would first like to thank the many contributors to this volume. We refer
not only to those scholars who actually penned the chapters of this book,
but all of the members of the vibrant Americanist communities that sustain our
reading and scholarship year after year. We feel fortunate to have so many gifted
interlocutors, and we are constantly impressed with the intellectual generosity of
our scholarly peers. The work contained here represents just a small introduction to
a truly rich body of work on a period of American literary history that continues to
fascinate us.
We also express our gratitude to Lynne Feeley and Sean Ward, whose labors on
these essays and the list of works cited have made this book have made this book
much better than it would have been otherwise. They repeatedly came to our aid
with skill and speed. We are grateful as well to Patrick Parrinder and Jonathan Arac
for inviting us to undertake this project and for their editorial advice and guidance.
Likewise, we would like to thank Brendan O’Neill and his colleagues at Oxford
University Press, both for their support of this series and the assistance that they
have given us throughout this editorial process. Finally, we want to acknowledge the
generosity of our institutions, Duke University and Emory University, for both the
financial and intellectual support that made this project possible.
P. W. and M. A. E.