Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860
"One of the important works of the year....Contains some of the best arguments I know on the conventionality of canon formation."--Michael J. Hoffman,American Literary Scholarship"Wide-ranging, clearly written, cogently argued.... One of those stimulating and significant seminal studies sure to be frequently cited."--Choice."A major reassessment of nineteenth-century 'sentimental' novels...Force[s] us to reconsider on every page our usual notions of literary valuation, interpretive bias, and canon formation."--Western Humanities Review"Sensational Designs...is an eye-opener for those too much obsessed by their own academic and cultural investments to understand the true stylistic and ideological complexity of nineteenth-century American fiction."--Philip F. Gura,Esquire"A cogently argued redefinition of the entire process of literary study."--Women's Review of Books