Sensational Designs The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860 [Paperback]

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