Competing Voices

Traces the development of the genre from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I, from the transformations of later 19th-century America to the rise of modernism. Considers such dimensions as sentimentalism versus professionalism, realism, local color, novels of race and racism, new women writers, naturalism, and emergent modernism. Considers both the standard canon and works by people on the social fringes.