Acknowledgements page vii
Introduction I
CONDITIONS OF LITERARY VOCATION
Michael Davitt Bell, Williams College
1 Beginnings of Professionalism
2 Women's fiction and the literary marketplace in the 1850s 74
THE LITERATURE OF EXPANSIONS AND RACE 125
Eric J. Sundquist, University of California, Los Angeles
1 Exploration and Empire 127
2 The frontier and American Indians 175
3 The literature of slavery and African American Culture 239
THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS
Barbara L. Packer, University of California, Los Angeles
1 Unitarian Beginnings 331
2 The Assault on Locke 350
3 Carlyle and the beginnings of American Transcendentalism 362
4 "Annus Mirabilis" 376
5 The establishment and the movement 392
6 Letters and social aims 424
7 The hope of reform 459
9 Diaspora 495
9 The antislavery years 548