This Companion provides fresh perspectives on the frequently read classic Uncle Tom's Cabin as well as on topics of perennial interest, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's representation of race, her attitude to reform, and her relationship to the American novel. Cindy Weinstein comprehensively investigates Stowe's impact on the American literary tradition and the novel of social change.

Through the publication of her bestseller Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe became one of the most internationally famous and important authors in nineteenth-century America. Today, her reputation is more complex, and Uncle Tom's Cabin has been debated and analysed in many different ways. This book provides a summary of Stowe's life and her long career as a professional author, as well as an overview of her writings in several different genres. Synthesizing scholarship from a range of perspectives, the book positions Stowe's work within the larger framework of nineteenth-century culture and attitudes about race, slavery and the role of women in society. Sarah Robbins also offers reading suggestions for further study. This introduction provides students of Stowe with a richly informed and accessible introduction to this fascinating author.

This volume provides newly commissioned essays from leading scholars and critics on the social and cultural history of the novel in America. It explores the work of the most influential American novelists of the past 200 years, including Melville, Twain, James, Wharton, Cather, Faulkner, Ellison, Pynchon, and Morrison.

A 2001 Companion providing an overview of the history of writing by women in nineteenth-century America.

The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature brings together leading scholars to examine the significance of slavery in American literature from the eighteenth century to the present day. In addition to stressing how central slavery has been to the study of American culture, this Companion provides students with a broad introduction to an impressive range of authors including Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Toni Morrison. Accessible to students and academics alike, this Companion surveys the critical landscape of a major field and lays the foundations for future studies.

Best known today for the innovative satire and experimental narrative of Tristram Shandy (1759–67), Laurence Sterne was no less famous in his time for A Sentimental Journey (1768) and for his controversial sermons. Sterne spent much of his life as an obscure clergyman in rural Yorkshire. But he brilliantly exploited the sensation achieved with the first instalment of Tristram Shandy to become, by his death in 1768, a fashionable celebrity across Europe. In this Companion, specially commissioned essays by leading scholars provide an authoritative and accessible guide to Sterne's writings in their historical and cultural context. Exploring key issues in his work, including sentimentalism, national identity, gender, print culture and visual culture, as well as his subsequent influence on a range of important literary movements and modes, the book offers a comprehensive new account of Sterne's life and work.

The slave narrative has become a crucial genre within African American literary studies and an invaluable record of the experience and history of slavery in the United States. This Companion examines the slave narrative's relation to British and American abolitionism, Anglo-American literary traditions such as autobiography and sentimental literature, and the larger African American literary tradition. Special attention is paid to leading exponents of the genre such as Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, as well as many other, less well known examples. Further essays explore the rediscovery of the slave narrative and its subsequent critical reception, as well as the uses to which the genre is put by modern authors such as Toni Morrison. With its chronology and guide to further reading, the Companion provides both an easy entry point for students new to the subject and comprehensive coverage and original insights for scholars in the field.

This Companion surveys Asian American literature from the nineteenth century to the present day.

General for the Series: The Casebooks in Criticism introduce readers to the essential criticism on landmark works of literature and film. For each volume, a distinguished scholar who is an authority on the text has collected the most elucidating and distinctive scholarly essays on that work and added key supporting materials. Each volume includes a substantial introduction which considers the key features of the work, describes its publication history, and contextualizes its cultural import and contemporary reputation while also surveying the major approaches which have informed the works critical history. A condensed bibliography offers suggestions for further reading. The compact volumes provide a critical survey and suggest provocative ways to engage with their texts. They are ideally suited to those interested in developing a deeper understanding of a works history and significance. Specific for this book: Most of the best criticism on Stowe's landmark novel is fairly recent. Until the combined impact of the civil rights and women's movements changed the focus of the academic ciriculum, Uncle Tom's Cabin seldom appeared in classrooms or as the subject of published scholarship. However, from the mid-1970 forward, the book has been widely written about and taught. Today, Uncle Toms Cabin is a stable, important part of the nineteenth-centruy American literature canon and has generated a rich body of new critical work. This casebook collects the best of the new scholarship as well as the most influential older essays. Included in this volume are letters by Harriet Beecher Stowe and articles by James Baldwin, Leslie Fiedler, Jane Tompkins, Gillian Brown, Robert Stepto, and Elizabeth Ammons.