Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Truth Stranger Than Fiction

Race, Realism, and the U.S. Literary Market Place

  • Book
  • © 2002

Overview

Authors:
  1. Augusta Rohrbach
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. “Truth Stranger and Stronger than Fiction”: Reexamining William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator

    • Augusta Rohrbach
    Pages 1-27

  3. Making it Real: The Impact of Slave Narratives on the Literary Marketplace

    • Augusta Rohrbach
    Pages 29-50

  4. The Strange Disappearance of Rose Terry Cooke and the Eclipse of American Realism

    • Augusta Rohrbach
    Pages 51-72

  5. William Dean Howells without his Mustache

    • Augusta Rohrbach
    Pages 73-97

  6. The Manner of the Marketplace: Edith Wharton as a Race Writer

    • Augusta Rohrbach
    Pages 99-114

  7. Keeping it Real: Truth More Marketable than Fiction?

    • Augusta Rohrbach
    Pages 115-118

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 119-153
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

Using the lens of business history to contextualize the development of an American literary tradition, Truth Stranger than Fiction shows how African American literature and culture greatly influenced the development of realism, which remains one of the most significant genres of writing in the United States. More specifically, Truth Stranger than Fiction traces the influences of generic conventions popularized in slave narratives - such as the use of authenticating details, as well as dialect, and a frank treatment of the human body - in later realist writings. As it unfolds, Truth Stranger than Fiction poses and explores a set of questions about the shifting relationship between literature and culture in the United States from 1830-1930 by focusing on the evolving trend of literary realism. Beginning with the question, 'How might slave narratives - heralded as the first indigenous literature by Theodore Parker - have influenced the development of American Literature?' the book develops connections between an emerging literary marketplace, the rise of the professional writer, and literary realism.

Reviews

Truth Stranger than Fiction is the first book to explore the direct relationship between slave narratives and realism in American fiction. It is a ground-breaking study, essential to the understanding of the history of American fictional realism, and should be read by all students and scholars of American literature. - Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University

About the author

AUGUSTA ROHRBACH is currently on a joint appointment at the Bunting Fellowship Program and the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Harvard University after being Bunting Fellow the previous year. In addition she has received grants from the Ford Foundation, the Houghton Library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and Oberlin College in support of this work. She taught at Oberlin College for four years (1995-99). She received a doctorate in American Literature from Columbia University in 1994. Her work has been published in national journals such as American Literature, Callaloo, Edith Wharton Review, International Studies in Philosophy, New England Quarterly, Print Magazine, and Prospects.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation