Department of English Georgia State University
Suggested Reading for the Comprehensive Examination in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (1820-1865)
The American Section’s Comprehensive Examination addressing antebellum nineteenth-century literature and culture evaluates students’ expertise as future professionals in the field. The primary and secondary texts listed below represent the breadth and diversity needed for an understanding of the field with which students begin work on a dissertation. As part of their preparation for the exam students will consult with their exam directors to develop a personalized list. While the list below is meant to be broadly comprehensive, it is not meant to be exhaustive. Students and directors may also decide to refine the list by adding thematic, theoretical, or historical emphases that lead more directly to work on a doctoral dissertation.
PRIMARY WORKS
Washington Irving The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1820) James Fenimore Cooper The Last of the Mohicans (1826) Catharine Maria Sedgwick Hope Leslie (1827) David Walker Walker’s Appeal (1829) Omar ibn Said Autobiography of Omar ibn Said (1831) Edgar Allan Poe Tales (1845) Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) Eureka (1848) selected prose:“Philosophy of Composition,” “The Rationale of Verse,” reviews of Twice Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836) Essays: First Series (1841) Essays: Second Series (1844) Representative Men (1851) The Conduct of Life (1860) Henry David Thoreau A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) Walden (1854) The Maine Woods (1864) selected prose: “Slavery in Massachusetts,” “A Plea for Captain Brown,” “Resistance to Civil Government,” “Wild Fruits,” “Autumnal Tints,” “The Succession of Forest Trees,” “Walking” Margaret Fuller Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
James Russell Lowell A Fable for Critics (1848) Sojourner Truth Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) Susan Warner The Wide, Wide World (1850) Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850) House of Seven Gables (1851) Blithedale Romance (1852) The Marble Faun (1860) selected tales: “Ethan Brand,” “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “The Birthmark,” “Young Goodman Brown,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” “The Artist of the Beautiful,” “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851) Pierre (1852) The Confidence Man (1857) “Benito Cereno,” “Billy Budd,” “Bartleby the Scrivener” Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) The Heroic Slave (1852) “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” (1852) Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) Joaquin Murieta (John The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta (1854) Rollin Ridge) Maria Susanna Cummins The Lamplighter (1854) Hannah Crafts The Bondswoman’s Narrative Frank Webb The Garies and Their Friends (1857) Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition Leaves of Grass, 1892 edition Democratic Vistas (1871) Specimen Days (1882) Emily Dickinson selected poems Harriet Wilson Our Nig (1859) Rebecca Harding Davis Life in the Iron Mills (1861) Martin Delany Blake; or the Huts of America (1859) The Origin of Races and Color (1879) Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) Alexander Crummell selected prose
SECONDARY WORKS General Works
The Cambridge History of American Literature, (vols. 2-4) ed. Sacvan Bercovitch (Cambridge UP, 1999).
Suggested Critics
Jonathan Arac Henry Louis Gates Dana D. Nelson Nina Baym Paul Giles Henry Paget Michael Davitt Bell Michael T. Gilmore Donald Pease Sacvan Bercovitch Teresa Goddu Richard Poirier Stuart Blumin Michael Gomez Joel Porte Richard Brodhead Robert M. Greenberg Lloyd Pratt Marshall Brown John Irwin David S. Reynolds Lawrence Buell Amy Kaplan John Carlos Rowe Sharon Cameron Harold Kaplan Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Stanley Cavell Mary Kelley Shirley Samuels William Charvat Paul Lauter Hortense Spillers Richard Chase Stephanie LeMenager Jeffrey Steele Michael Colacurcio Lawrence Levine Eric Sundquist Wai Chee Dimock R.W.B. Lewis Jane Tompkins Andrew Delbanco F. O. Matthiessen Alan Trachtenberg Ann Douglas Lori Merish Yvor Winters Betsy Erkkila Walter Benn Michaels Cynthia Griffin Wolff Judith Fetterley Perry Miller Larzer Ziff Frances Smith Foster Toni Morrison