Lawrence Buell
The Dream of the Great American Novel
Harvard University Press, 2014. Author-signed first edition. 9780674051157  xii/567 pages.
Volume is bound in gilt-lettered dark green quarter cloth and turqoise paper-covered boards. Book and dust jacket are like new. Author's signature and date ("17 April 2015") appear on title page. Jacket is now preserved in a paper-backed mylar cover.
"The idea of "the great American novel" continues to thrive almost as vigorously as in its nineteenth-century heyday, defying 150 years of attempts to dismiss it as amateurish or obsolete. In this landmark book, the first in many years to take in the whole sweep of national fiction, Lawrence Buell reanimates this supposedly antiquated idea, demonstrating that its history is a key to the dynamics of national literature and national identity itself."