A comprehensive guide to realism and regionalism in American literature, this engaging volume discusses sectionalism, industrialism, and literary regionalism; slave narratives and race relations; the life and work of Mark Twain; urban writers and internationalism; regionalism; and naturalism, determinism, and social reform. Writers covered include: Horatio Alger, Willa Cather, Kate Chopin, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Harriet Jacobs, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jack London, Frank Norris, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edith Wharton, and more.