The English Literatures of America: 1500-1800

by Myra Jehlen (Editor), Michael Warner (Editor)

The English Literatures of America redefines colonial American literatures, sweeping from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to the West Indies and Guiana. The book begins with the first colonization of the Americas and stretches beyond the Revolution to the early national period. Many texts are collected here for the first time; others are recognized masterpieces of the canon--both British and American--that can now be read in their Atlantic context. By emphasizing the culture of empire and by representing a transatlantic dialogue, The English Literatures of America allows a new way to understand colonial literature both in the United States and abroad.

Genres: Anthologies

1142 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 1996

About the author

Myra Jehlen is Board of Governors Professor of English at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Professor Jehlen is the author of Readings at the Edge of Literature (2002), Class and Character in Faulkner's South (1976), American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent (1989), and "The Literature of Colonization" in Volume I of The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 1, 1590-1820 (ed. Sacvan Bercovitch, 1994). She has also co-edited a number of volumes, including The English Literatures of America, 1500-1800 (1996), with Michael Warner. Her essays deal with American writing, comparative literature, and theoretical issues in literary interpretation and history.