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The Norton Antology of American Literature #C
The Norton Anthology of American Literature: American Literature 1865-1914
The Norton Anthology of American Literature is the classic survey of American literature from its sixteenth-century origins to the present.
This volume—Volume C, the third out of five—covers American literature from 1820 to 1865.
This volume—Volume C, the third out of five—covers American literature from 1820 to 1865.
1069 pages, Paperback
First published April 19, 2007
15 people are currently reading
386 people want to read
About the author
Nina Baym
39 books16 followersNina Baym (born 1936) was an American literary critic and literary historian. She is best known as the General Editor of the renowned The Norton Anthology of American Literature, from 1991 - 2018. She was professor of English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for over 40 years, from 1963 to 2004.
Baym was a scholar who asked why so few women were represented in the American literary canon, and subsequently spent her career working to correct that imbalance.
While teaching as English professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975, Baym was writing a book about Nathaniel Hawthorne when she began to wonder why 19th-Century American literature was so male-dominated.
It was Hawthorne himself who helped pique her curiosity: in 1855, he had famously complained that "a damned mob of scribbling women" was cutting into his sales.
“I wanted to know where these women were,” she recalled in an interview with The New York Times in 1987.
She went searching through library bookshelves and 19th-century newspapers and magazines, looking for information about the absent women writers. She found plenty of novels written by women in the 1800's, and though they varied in quality, she concluded that many deserved more than obscurity.
Baym went on to author and edit of a number of groundbreaking works of American literary history and criticism, beginning with Woman's Fiction (1978), and including Feminism and American Literary History (1992), American Women Writers and the Work of History (1995), and American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth-Century Sciences (2004).
Elaine Showalter called Baym's Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927 (2011), "The first comprehensive guide to women's writing in the old West," and proclaimed it an "immediately standard and classic text."
The book uncovers and describes the western-themed writing in diverse genres of almost 350 American women, most of them unknown today, but many of them successful and influential in their own time.
Baym was active in many professional associations, such as the American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association and the American Studies Association, as well as serving as Director of the School of Humanities at the University of Illinois from 1976-1987. She served on panels for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbight Foundation.
Among her numerous literary prizes, fellowship, and honors are the 2000 Jay B. Hubbell Award for lifetime achievement in American literary studies (from the Modern Language Association) and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, and the Mellon Foundation.
Baym was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1936; her father was the eminent mathematician Leo Zippin, and her mother was an English teacher. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. from Radcliffe, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
She died in 1971.
Baym was a scholar who asked why so few women were represented in the American literary canon, and subsequently spent her career working to correct that imbalance.
While teaching as English professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975, Baym was writing a book about Nathaniel Hawthorne when she began to wonder why 19th-Century American literature was so male-dominated.
It was Hawthorne himself who helped pique her curiosity: in 1855, he had famously complained that "a damned mob of scribbling women" was cutting into his sales.
“I wanted to know where these women were,” she recalled in an interview with The New York Times in 1987.
She went searching through library bookshelves and 19th-century newspapers and magazines, looking for information about the absent women writers. She found plenty of novels written by women in the 1800's, and though they varied in quality, she concluded that many deserved more than obscurity.
Baym went on to author and edit of a number of groundbreaking works of American literary history and criticism, beginning with Woman's Fiction (1978), and including Feminism and American Literary History (1992), American Women Writers and the Work of History (1995), and American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth-Century Sciences (2004).
Elaine Showalter called Baym's Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927 (2011), "The first comprehensive guide to women's writing in the old West," and proclaimed it an "immediately standard and classic text."
The book uncovers and describes the western-themed writing in diverse genres of almost 350 American women, most of them unknown today, but many of them successful and influential in their own time.
Baym was active in many professional associations, such as the American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association and the American Studies Association, as well as serving as Director of the School of Humanities at the University of Illinois from 1976-1987. She served on panels for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbight Foundation.
Among her numerous literary prizes, fellowship, and honors are the 2000 Jay B. Hubbell Award for lifetime achievement in American literary studies (from the Modern Language Association) and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, and the Mellon Foundation.
Baym was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1936; her father was the eminent mathematician Leo Zippin, and her mother was an English teacher. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. from Radcliffe, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
She died in 1971.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 25, 2020
3/5 Stars (%63/100)
I suggest you read my reviews for Volume A and Volume B before moving into this. In this volume, we start with the aftermath of the Civil War. The black literature has changed and many new black writers have emerged. American literature is much more unique and relevant in the world. This is another great volume for especially American literature students.
I suggest you read my reviews for Volume A and Volume B before moving into this. In this volume, we start with the aftermath of the Civil War. The black literature has changed and many new black writers have emerged. American literature is much more unique and relevant in the world. This is another great volume for especially American literature students.
February 18, 2022
This era of literature lowkey flopped, ngl
July 9, 2025
The era of interest in American literature is a little enervated unless you're really big on Whitman (like Harold Bloom).
Here are the major figures whose literary work is featured:
1) Walt Whitman
2) Emily Dickinson
3) Mark Twain
4) Ambrose Bierce
5) Henry James
6) Edith Wharton
7) Stephen Crane
8) Jack London
There are other important figures but some of these are included for historical or cultural reasons rather than aesthetic reasons and I'm not sure some of the inclusion actually qualify as literature. I plan to return to this anthology to dig into the lesser known figures more.
Here are the major figures whose literary work is featured:
1) Walt Whitman
2) Emily Dickinson
3) Mark Twain
4) Ambrose Bierce
5) Henry James
6) Edith Wharton
7) Stephen Crane
8) Jack London
There are other important figures but some of these are included for historical or cultural reasons rather than aesthetic reasons and I'm not sure some of the inclusion actually qualify as literature. I plan to return to this anthology to dig into the lesser known figures more.
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September 22, 2021the exam i just took with the readings of this book almost killed me.
Read
October 28, 2021Required textbook for American Literature II class with Dr. Alexander at Seton Hall University
July 4, 2007
Good collection of works from 1865-ish to 1914, including classics like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and often overlooked Native American writings.
October 26, 2009
Textbook, No Comment.
December 3, 2012
read parts of this for uni.
November 28, 2012
/ First read 28 July-19 October 2008.
April 22, 2013
Read Huckleberry Finn from this book. Lots excellent of short stories. Enjoyed reading some of them.
Read for college class 2328 American Literature. TCC dual credit class.
Read for college class 2328 American Literature. TCC dual credit class.
May 9, 2022
Reading:
Stephen Crane's "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets"
Stephen Crane's "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets"
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews