Reader-Response Criticism

Jane P. Thompkins has written widely on the work of Charles Borckden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin, and Henry James. Her recent work includes Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work from American Fiction, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns, and A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned.

Jane Tompkins' excellent work is above all a useful introduction to current talk about readers in literary theory, talk that supports a new focus on readers reading in practical criticism... A significant contribution to contemporary critical theory. Modern Language Notes