Containing 29 essays and 12 illustrations with accompanying texts, this comprehensive volume is divided into three sections covering historical traditions and genres, contexts and themes, and major authors. The essays address a mixture of canonical and non-canonical subjects; so, alongside treatment of such standard topics as realism, naturalism, and regionalism are contributions on the romance, sentimentalism, early modernism, African American and Native American narratives, women's fiction, class, ethnicity, and the short story. A significant feature of the book is its inclusion of chapters on both frontier and urban narratives, Civil War literature, Darwin's influence on fiction, children's literature, consumer culture, law and narrative, utopian fiction, and ecological literature and ecocriticism. Contributors present lucid syntheses of the best criticism available on their topics and, at the same time, offer original perspectives of their own.

This Companion is essential reading for anyone interested in American literature from this important period.