The Cambridge History of the American Essay

The Cambridge History of the American Essay is the first comprehensive account of this essential literary genre in the US.

Christy Wampole (Edited by), Jason Childs (Edited by)

9781316512708, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 December 2023

850 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 4.2 cm, 1.18 kg

'This is a literary milestone for work on the essay form. Anyone who wishes to further their understanding of its vibrantly diverse American manifestations will find the Cambridge History an invaluable guide. Wampole calls the essay one of the 'most robust literary traditions' in the United States. Its vigor can be seen with pleasing clarity through the lenses supplied by this well-conceived and impressively executed study.' Chris Arthur, World Literature Today

From the country's beginning, essayists in the United States have used their prose to articulate the many ways their individuality has been shaped by the politics, social life, and culture of this place. The Cambridge History of the American Essay offers the fullest account to date of this diverse and complex history. From Puritan writings to essays by Indigenous authors, from Transcendentalist and Pragmatist texts to Harlem Renaissance essays, from New Criticism to New Journalism: The story of the American essay is told here, beginning in the early eighteenth century and ending with the vibrant, heterogeneous scene of contemporary essayistic writing. The essay in the US has taken many forms: nature writing, travel writing, the genteel tradition, literary criticism, hybrid genres such as the essay film and the photo essay. Across genres and identities, this volume offers a stirring account of American essayism into the twenty-first century.

Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction Christy Wampole
Part I. The Emergence of the American Essay (1710–1865)
1. Essays to do good: puritanism and the birth of the American essay Jan Stievermann
2. Prattlers, meddlers, bachelors, busy-bodies: the periodical essay in the eighteenth century Richard Squibbs
3. The federalist and the founders Matthew Garrett
4. American nature writing: 1700–1900 Noah Rawlings
5. The essay and transcendentalism Laura Dassow Walls
6. Old world Shadows in the new: Europe and the nineteenth-century American essay Philip Coleman
7. Poet-essayists and magazine culture in the nineteenth century John Michael
8. Antebellum women essayists Charlene Avallone
Part II. Voicing the American Experiment (1865–1945)
9. Writing freedom before and after emancipation Kinohi Nishikawa
10. Social justice and the American essay Christy Wampole
11. 'Zones of contention' in the genteel essay Jenny Spinner
12. The American comic essay David E. E. Sloane
13. Nineteenth-century American travel essays: aesthetics, modernity, and national identity Brigitte Bailey
14. American pragmatism: an essayistic conception of truth Jonathan Levin
15. The essay in the Harlem renaissance Shawn Anthony Christian
16. The southern agrarians and the new criticism Sarah E. Gardner
17. Subjective and objective: newspaper columns William E. Dow
18. The experience of art: the essay in visual culture Tom Huhn
19. The essay in American music Kyle Gann
Part III: Postwar Essays and Essayism (1945–2000)
20. The essay and the twentieth-century literary magazine Eleni Theodoropoulos
21. Germans in Amerika: written possibility, uninhabitable reality Florian Fuchs
22. The essay and the American left Andrea Capra
23. The native American essay Hertha D. Sweet Wong
24. Conservatism and the essay Jeffrey R. Dudas
25. Opinions and decisions: legal essays Peter Goodrich
26. World War Two to #MeToo: the personal and the political in the American feminist essay Ellena Savage
27. Self-portraits in a convex mirror: the essay in American poetry Lucy Alford
28. The American essay and (social) science Ted Anton
29. Philosophy as a kind of writing Paul Jenner
30. The essay and literary postmodernism: seriousness and exhaustion Stefano Ercolino
Part IV: Toward the Contemporary American Essay (2000–2020)
31. The American essay film: a neglected genre Nora M. Alter
32. Literary theory, criticism, and the essay Carolina Iribarren
33. Gender, queerness, and the American essay David Lazar
34. Disability and the American essay Anne Finger
35. The radical hybridity of the lyric essay Michael Askew
36. Writing migration: multiculturalism, democracy, and the essay form Cyrus R.K. Patell
37. Latinx culture and the essay Yolanda Padilla
38. Black experience through the essay Walton Muyumba
39. The essay and the anthropocene David Carlin
Recommendations for Further Reading
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]