A Brief History of American Literature

"This is a wonderful book. Writing in an elegantly accessible style, Richard Gray offers the reader a truly comprehensive narrative of American literature from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. The entire range, diversity, and richness of American writing are made available here in a single, superbly authoritative volume."
—Andrew Hook, University of Glasgow

"Drawing upon a lifetime of reading and research in this field, and covering a huge range of material from the Bay Psalm Book to Walter Mosley, Richard Gray's Literature of the United States offers an excellent survey that holds the American cultural tradition in a compelling, synoptic whole."
—Paul Giles, University of Sydney

"Richard Gray's A Brief History of American Literature is an extraordinary achievement. Gray offers us a fascinating and nuanced overview of United States writing, employing literary sensibility to examine a range of periods and genres."
—Susan Castillo, King's College, London