New Books In American Studies

As scholars and readers, we often view literary history in rigid, simplistic terms. We imagine that nineteenth-century aesthetic and thematic preoccupations withered away as 1899 became 1900, only to be replaced immediately by a new literature of the twentieth century. In their dynamic, wide-ranging collection Melanie V. Dawson and Meredith L. Goldsmith challenge this conventional understanding of American literary history. Drawing together a diverse range of essays focused on iconic turn-of-the century writers such as Edith Wharton, Jack London and Sarah Piatt, as well as lesser-known authors like Jessie Fauset and Laura Jean Libbey, American Literary History and the Turn toward Modernity (University Press of Florida, 2018) encourages readers to reconsider their understanding of literary “modernity.” The essays contained in this wonderful new collection, published just this year by the University Press of Florida, interrogate the popular construction of literary culture between 1880 and 1930. Paying close at