'The volume's organization is clever and fuses together both older, 'traditional' forms of literary study (authors and genres) and newer forms of cultural studies. I can imagine the essays being used individually by instructors teaching undergraduate classes as well as more comprehensively by graduate students or anyone starting a new project who needs an overview of new work in the field and/or new perspectives on the foundational concepts, genres, and authors of the era. This collection is mercifully free of the hemming and hawing around aesthetic judgment, critical valuation, and the 'method wars' that have recently bogged down many other literary fields. … Each of the essays here uses varying and idiosyncratic blends of historicism, close reading, network theory, cultural study, biography, structuralism, poststructuralism, and more. I find in this methodological spontaneity the true heart of this delightfully weird field.' Sarah Blackwood, Early American Literature