"This is not only a brilliant book but a lovable one, a joy to read not only for its insights but for its modesty, its playfulness, its wholesomeness of outlook on literature and the critical activity. This is not primarily a book for Sarah Orne Jewett scholars, nor it is just for Americanists or even academics. It is a book for anyone who has been deeply touched by literature and has thought about the relation between the 'moving' and the 'great.'
—Leslie Brisman, Yale University
Louis A. Renza is associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.