Product Description: In addition to the entire text of what some consider the quintessential American novel, this comprehensive volume features materials that help place the novel in perspective with its time and place. "Contexts" includes essays on the composition of the novel, the people and history of the Upper Mississippi Valley, slavery, and the critical reception of the novel upon its publication...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The Cultural Work of the Late Nineteenth-Century Hostess explores the influence well-placed, energetic women had on literary and political culture in the U.S. and in England in the years 1870-1920. Fields, an American, was first married to James T...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Passionate readers both, Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain courted through books, spelling out their expectations through literary references as they corresponded during their frequent separations. Working with Langdon's own letters and diaries as well as Twain's, Harris traces the progress of their courtship within the larger context of Victorian American culture, showing how the couple negotiated their relationship through the mediums of literature, material culture, and social and familial dynamics...read more

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