"Johnson examines the worth of liberal democracy and the question of cultural development by looking at novels by James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells. Using the fictions to explore the richness of everyday life, he offers new insight into the relationship between the state and the individual"--Provided by publisher.

"Comparative study of Henry James's and William Dean Howells's literary criticism. Examines the interrelationship between the men, emphasizing their aesthetic concerns and attitudes toward the market and audience, and their beliefs concerning the moral value of fiction and the United States as a literary subject, and writings about each other"--Provided by publisher.

Presents comparative domestic biographies of four American Realist writers: Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Drawing upon extensive primary sources to reconstruct the authors' private lives, Domestic Biographies illuminates how they lived when no one was looking. In particular this book examines how the authors worked and wrote at home and how their home life in turn made its way into their novels and non-fiction....

Traces the beginnings of fiction in America and the earliest writer researched is Cooper and the latest is Wolfe. Commentaries on the novelists are presented.