American Literary Misfits

“American Literary Misfits takes its place in a long and vibrant tradition of scholarship that wrestles with the tension that results from stitching thirteen distinct political and cultural units into a national fabric.”—American Periodicals

“Fundamentally, this book challenges traditional accounts that emphasize the evolution of a distinguished national literary culture and a democratic public sphere.”—American Journalism

“[Emerson’s argument] makes a strong case to reassess our narratives of literary history with an eye toward neglected texts.”—Journal of American Culture

“Emerson’s American Literary Misfits focuses attention on texts traditionally excluded from conversations about democracy and US literature. . . . Rather than grappling with the grandiose concept of the democratic nation in its providential, global scope, these texts are distinguished by their limited, intensely local preoccupations.”—American Literary History

"Emerson offers fascinating, unexpected readings of popular fictions usually classed as regional, sloppy, or weird—as 'misfits'—within US literary history. A lively, original work.”—Hester Blum, Penn State University

“Raising timely questions about the sustainability of American democracy, Emerson provides an account of an unruly, chaotic, and local form of political being in the nineteenth-century United States. This will be an important work for all those interested in how the American political experiment shaped its emergent aesthetics.”—Edward Sugden, King’s College London