American Literary-political Engagements From Poe to James

American Literary-Political Engagements: From Poe to James examines how authors in the nineteenth-century United States often engaged the politics of their times through literature as they conceptualized political issues in literary terms. Concerns over Jacksonian democracy, social reform in a rapidly industrializing American economy, African-American familial cooperation in the post-Civil War era, changing conceptions of culpability with respect to the law, and marginalized individualsâ (TM) involvement in political agitation near the close of the century were made the central subjects of diverse literary works which, though not often characterized as overtly â oepolitical, â nevertheless made these political concerns a matter of and for literary art. Through examinations of Edgar Allan Poeâ (TM)s comedic tales â oeHow to Write a Blackwood Articleâ and â oeA Predicament, â Rebecca Harding Davisâ (TM) novel Margret Howth, Mattie J. Jacksonâ (TM)s postbellum slave narrative, William Dean Howellsâ (TM) A Modern Instance, and Henry Jamesâ (TM) The Princess Casamassima, this book considers how these texts enrich our understanding of nineteenth-century Americaâ (TM)s conceptions of the possibilities and responsibilities of literature and of popular democracy, industrialization, African-American women, the law, political agitation, and disability.