Many Critics believe that Henry James has set the definitive standards of modern fiction writing. Undoubtedly his groundbreaking article "The Art of Fiction," which published for the first time in 1884, has a major contribution in developing the theories of fiction writing. The term Organic Unity has derived from a major Formalist…

This dissertation attempts to explain how nineteenth-century American Spiritualist literature may have made readers feel like they were hearing voices, touching the dead, seeing celestial spaces, or enjoying other sensory proofs of the afterlife. Spiritualists believed that, while all human beings possessed faculties designed to perceive the dead,…

Building on the groundbreaking research of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media & Learning initiative, this book crosses the divide between digital literacies and traditional print culture to engage a generation of students who can read with a book in one hand and a mouse in the other. "Reading in a Participatory Culture" tells the story of an…

Nineteenth-century literature offers insights into the history and sociology of play in American life. Louisa May Alcott's novel "Little Women" contains especially rich period depictions of childhood games and amusements and provides some of the earliest scenes of American girls at play. The author discusses the various depictions of…

While traveling along the Platte River on May 18, 1834, William Marshall Anderson stopped to pick up a human skull bleaching in the prairie sunlight. Anderson was from Louisville, Kentucky, and had been sent west by his physician to accompany a fur-trade caravan to the Rocky Mountains in hopes of regaining lost physical strength. He came west not…

An independent and strong-minded woman gains control of a farm and determines to effect its fruition. Though many doubt her capacity, the female landowner trumps her male counterparts when the farm flourishes under her effective management. In the end, she marries--but on extremely unconventional terms. Rejecting romantic love, she instead weds a…

This article reads two late nineteenth century short stories--one by Guy de Maupassant and the other by Louisa May Alcott--through the interpretive framework of Critical Disability Studies. It contrasts the traditional view of disability as a deficit or pathology that befalls certain unfortunate individuals with a newer one that understands it…

Examines the critical treatment of business in six late nineteenth century plays by two successful American playwrights, Bronson Howard and Augustus Thomas. Analyzes the elements of character and dramatic conflict arising from the antibusiness theme. (JMF)

Author emphasizes attitudes toward slavery in his analysis of the relationships among the characters in Melville's story. (SP)

Text of Sejour's story "Le Mulatre" (The Mulatto) is included. (RS)

This annotated bibliography, prepared by the Children's Book Section of the Library of Congress to celebrate the centennial of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," lists editions of the Mark Twain classics most widely read by young people, biographical or autobiographical and travel works significant for relevent background, and miscellaneous…

During his long career as medical doctor, professor, lecturer, and author, Oliver Wendell Holmes produced, among other notable works, three novels designed to caution the medical profession against giving precedence to cures over causes in the healing process: "Elsie Venner,""the Guardian Angel," and "A Mortal…

Black authors have long been telling America about its slave past, although America has apparently not been listening. Frank Webb's novel, "The Garies and Their Friends," was published in the same decade as Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and yet it has never achieved the popularity of Stowe's work, although its characters are…