Correspondence and american literature

Elizabeth Hewitt0521842557, 9780521842556, 9780511265686

Elizabeth Hewitt argues that many canonical American authors, including Jefferson, Emerson, Melville, Dickinson and Whitman, turned to letter-writing as an idealized genre through which to consider the challenges of American democracy before the Civil War. Hewitt maintains that, although correspondence is generally only conceived as a biographical archive, it must instead be understood as a significant genre through which these early authors made sense of social and political relations in the new nation.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Half-title……Page 3
Series-title……Page 4
Title……Page 5
Copyright……Page 6
Dedication……Page 7
Contents……Page 9
Acknowledgments……Page 10
Abbreviations……Page 12
Introduction Universal letter-writers……Page 13
1 National letters……Page 28
2 Emerson and Fuller’s phenomenal letters……Page 64
3 Melville’s dead letters……Page 95
4 Jacobs’s letters from nowhere……Page 123
5 Dickinson’s lyrical letters……Page 154
Conclusion Whitman’s universal letters……Page 185
Notes……Page 200
Index……Page 238