A History of American Literature

by Richard J. Gray

This major new history of American literature from pre-Columbian times to the present is written in an informed but accessible style by one of the leading authorities in the field.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Criticism, History, Literary Fiction, American

912 pages, Paperback

First published February 23, 2004

Reviews

[Alok Mishra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard's scholarship is dominant and he has proved it here. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know about American literature in depth. Do read this one!

[Pol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavy with the weight of knowledge, both literally and figuratively. Gray does superb treatments of the most well known ones (I like the sections on Emerson, Melville's 'Moby-Dick', Douglass's slave narrative, and Theodore Dreiser) and some attention is devoted to the less well known ones like Sinclair Lewis, but he is content to be pithy (and arguably inaccurate) with others. I couldn't possibly agree with his characterisation of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 - I don't see how a novel described by other critics as a 'postmodern humanist text' is 'bleakly deterministic' (Gray), and many critics have devoted their time to proving that Vonnegut was anything but fatalistic. His comments on Charles R. Johnson are so pithy as to be misleading as well. I would hardly think of race as a 'determining influence' on Johnson in the way Gray implies it. It's a critical commonplace that Johnson attempts to transcend racialised writing. I should also mention that it can be read in bits and pieces as I did; there isn't a need to read the whole thing from Alpha to Omega as it were, because each section is in a way self contained – that is always a plus point.

[The Half-blood Reader]

College reads: I only read chapters/sections relevant to my studies, hence the dnf

[jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the anthology we use for my survey in American Lit/551 class. Overall, it is pretty good though I find Gray a bit overrun by his own opinions on American authors from time to time. And he likes to use the same diction over and over again. So as long as you don't sit and read it for three hours straight, you should be O.K. But it is a good overview of American lit in general.

[Carla Ferreira · Rating 5 out of 5]

It brings a fully account of American Literature. It is divided into themes and that is helpful for teachers. I recommend for those who teach American Literature, mainly in Brazil, where I teach.

[Nafisa Awal · Rating 5 out of 5]

আমেরিকান সাহিত্যের ইতিহাসের উপর বই খুবই কম আছে, যা আছে সবই ব্রিটিশ সাহিত্যের। সেখান থেকে আমার মনে হয় এই বইটা যথেষ্ট গুছানো এবং গোড়া থেকে শুরু করে সমস্ত ইতিহাস স্টুডেন্টদের জন্য তুলে ধরতে সক্ষম হয়েছে। যারা আমেরিকান লিটারেচার নিয়ে আগ্রহ রাখে এবং কাজ করতে চায়, তাদের জন্য উপযোগী এবং অত্যন্ত গুরুত্বপূর্ণ বই।