A History of American Literature

Updated throughout and with much new material, A History of American Literature, Second Edition, is the most up-to-date and comprehensive survey available of the myriad forms of American Literature from pre-Columbian times to the present.

• The most comprehensive and up-to-date history of American literature available today
• Covers fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction, as well as other forms of literature including folktale, spirituals, the detective story, the thriller, and science fiction
• Explores the plural character of American literature, including the contributions made by African American, Native American, Hispanic and Asian American writers
• Considers how our understanding of American literature has changed over the past?thirty years
• Situates American literature in the contexts of American history, politics and society
• Offers an invaluable introduction to American literature for students at all levels, academic and general readers

Richard Gray is Professor of Literature at the University of Essex and former Distinguished Visiting Professor at a number of universities in the United States. He is the first specialist in American literature to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy and has published over a dozen books on the topic, including the award-winning Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region (1986) and The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography (1994). His History of American Literature (Blackwell, 2004) is widely considered to be one of the standard works on the subject.