An indispensable tool for teachers and students of American literature, Reading the American Novel 1865-1914 provides a comprehensive introduction to the American novel in the post-civil war period.

• Locates American novels and stories within a specific historical and literary context
• Offers fresh analyses of key selected literary works
• Addresses a wide audience of academics and non-academics in clear, accessible prose
• Demonstrates the changing mentality of 19th-century America entering the 20th century
• Explores the relationship between the intellectual and artistic output of the time and the turbulent socio-political context

G. R. Thompson is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Purdue University. He has written widely on the topic of American fiction and romanticism, including books and articles on the relation of the romance to the realist tradition, the gothic fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, the short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the travel narratives of Herman Melville. He is the editor of various editions, including the Norton Critical Edition of The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. He is the former editor of Poe Studies and ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance.