New York
A Literary History

The city's literature is explored in this volume, which reveals a metropolis in a constant state of movement.

Ross Wilson (Edited by)

9781108470810, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 February 2020

332 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.6 kg

'The collection is too eclectic and wide-ranging to serve as a reference resource, but all the essays are thoughtful, well written, and provocative. The study of literature through the lens of space and place is a significant critical trend, one to which this book is an important contribution … Highly recommended.' J. W. Miller, Choice

New York City's streets, parks, museums, architecture, and its people appear in an array of literary works published from New York's earliest settlement to the present day. The exploration of the city as both a symbol and as a reality has formed the basis of New York's literature. Using the themes of adaptation, innovation, identity, and hope, this history explores novels, poetry, periodicals, and newspapers to examine how New York's literature can be understood through the notion of movement. From the periodicals of the nineteenth century, the Arabic writers of the city in the early twentieth century, the literature of homelessness, childhood, and the spaces of tragedy and resilience within the metropolis, this diverse assessment opens up new areas of research within urban literature. It provides an innovative examination of how writing has shaped the lives of New Yorkers and how writing about the city has shaped the modern world.

Introduction
1. Introduction: a history of New York literature Ross Wilson
Part I. Adaptation and Adjustment: 2. Changing culture: the contribution of European immigrants to New York City literature, 1870–1940 Martino Marazzi
3. Agitators and intellectuals: radical Jewish storytellers Catherine Morley
4. The mirror of the West: Arab-American literature in early twentieth century New York City Raphael Cormack
5. Writing the Big Apple in Chinese and Chinese American literature Pin-chia Feng
Part II. Innovation and Inspiration: 6. Sharing social space: New York as a city of the housed and unhoused Dorothea Löbbermann
7. Health reform in the mid-nineteenth-century New York periodical press David Dowling
8. Neoliberal New York: contemporary literature and the politics of urban redevelopment Catalina Neculai
9. The marvellous and the mundane: ekphrastic New York novels Monika Gehlawat
Part III. Identity and Place: 10. Growing up in Manhattan: children's literature and New York City Pádraic Whyte
11. Wartime reading in the city, 1914–1918 Ross Wilson
12. The periodical and the flâneur in early New York writing Peter Ferry
13. Multiple voices: New York City poetry Rona Cran
14. The New York School: toward a definition Yasmine Shamma
Part IV. Tragedy and Hope: 15. The spatial drama of hope and desire in contemporary New York City literature Bart Eeckhout
16. New and Old Amsterdam in twenty-first century fiction Maria Lauret
17. Beats, black culture and bohemianism in mid-twentieth century New York City Douglas Field
18. 'The sixth borough': imagining New York after 9/11 Birgit Däwes
19. Walking the modern city: emotion and space in New York Nathalie Cochoy
20. Afterword Lisa Keller.

Subject Areas: Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA]