Nina Baym

A selection of American literature drawn from throughout history, beginning in 1820 and continuing through 1865. Includes a time line, color plates, and bibliographies.

The Norton Anthology of American Literature

The Norton anthology of American literature

Volume 1

Volumes A-B

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Package 1

Kate Chopin

Presents "The Awakening" and other short stories, including "Beyond the Bayou," "A respectable woman," and "A Pair of Silk Stockings."

The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin

Firmly grounded in the core strengths that have made it the best-selling undergraduate survey in the field, The Norton Anthology of American Literature has been revitalized in this Seventh Edition through the collaboration between three new period editors and five seasoned ones.

Beginnings to 1865

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Includes outstanding works of American poetry, prose, and fiction from the Colonial era to the present day.

Analyzes the plot, setting, characters, themes, and symbolism in Hawthorne's novel, and discusses the purpose of its "Custom-house" portion

A Reading

The Scarlet Letter

Professor of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences Nina Baym

This book describes and characterizes responses of American readers to fiction in the generation before the Civil War. It is based on close examination of the reviews of all novels--both American and European--that appeared in major American periodicals during the years 1840-1860, a period in which magazines, novels, and novel reviews all proliferated. Nina Baym makes uses of the reviews to gain information about the formal, aesthetic, and moral expectations of reviewers. Her major conclusion is that the accepted view about the American novel before the Civil War--the view that the atmosphere in America was hostile to fiction--is a myth. There is compelling evidence, she shows, for the existence of a veritable novel industry and, concomitantly, a vast audience for fiction in the 1840s and 1850s.

Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America

Novels, Readers, and Reviewers

Between the Wars 1914-1945

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume D

Jerome Klinkowitz

Philip F. Gura

Robert S. Levine

Wayne Franklin

Shorter

This book explores the responses to science displayed in a range of writings by American women. Conceding that they could not become scientists, women insisted, however, that they were capable of understanding science and participating in its discourse. They used their access to publishing to advocate the study and transmission of scientific information to the general public. Baym's book includes biographies and a full exploration of these women's works. She also investigates science in women's novels, writing by and about women doctors, and the scientific claims advanced by women's spiritualist movements.

Styles of Affiliation

American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth-century Sciences

"This book traces the birth, growth, and decline of a genre of popular fiction that dominated American literary taste for at least a generation - a genre created by women and directed at them"--Cover.

A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870

Woman's Fiction

Just as she helped launch the rediscovery of literary texts by American women writers, Nina Baym now uncovers the work of history performed by over 150 writers in over 350 texts. Here she explores a world of important writing unknown even to most specialists. The novels, poems, plays, textbooks, and travel narratives written by women between 1790 and the Civil War defy current theories of women's writing that stress a female domain of the private, homebound, and emotional. History is inarguably public in its nature and these women wrote it. In doing so, they challenged the imaginative and intellectual boundaries that divided domestic and public worlds. They claimed on behalf of all women the rights to know and to speak about the world outside the home, as well as to circulate their knowledge and opinions among the public. Their work helped shape the enormous public interest in history characteristic of the antebellum nation, and ultimately to forge our national identity in the history of the world. Nina Baym deftly outlines the master narrative of history implied in women's writings of this period, and discusses in a completely revisioned context the emergence of women's history in public discourse.

American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860

This book describes and characterizes responses of American readers to fiction in the generation before the Civil War. It is based on close examination of the reviews of all novels—both American and European—that appeared in major American periodicals during the years 1840–1860, a period in which magazines, novels, and novel reviews all proliferated. Nina Baym makes uses of the reviews to gain information about the formal, aesthetic, and moral expectations of reviewers. Her major conclusion is that the accepted view about the American novel before the Civil War—the view that the atmosphere in America was hostile to fiction—is a myth. There is compelling evidence, she shows, for the existence of a veritable novel industry and, concomitantly, a vast audience for fiction in the 1840s and 1850s.

Nina Baym

Books

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