Narrating Class in American Fiction

Narrating Class in American Fiction" engages us in more than one way. Not only does it make an important and insightful contribution to the scholarship on the issue of class in American literature, but it also provides a welcome and long overdue examination of the influence of journalism on American literature. For too long those connections have remained largely unexamined. Now Dow's book eloquently provides insight into how literary journalism helped to shape the work of such authors as Whitman, Crane, and London. Equally important, he contributes to restoring the importance of such authors as Rebecca Harding Davis, Meridel Le Sueur, Zora Neale Hurston, and Agnes Smedley, again through the prism of how their journalistically infused literature and literary journalism ultimately shaped their literary visions. "Narrating Class in American Fiction" is to be commended for helping fill the void of a history we have long been denied.