Founded in Fiction: The Uses of Fiction in the Early United States

An original account of the importance of diverse forms of fiction in the early American republic—one that challenges the “rise of the novel” narrative

What is the use of fiction? This question preoccupied writers in the early United States, where many cultural authorities insisted that fiction-reading would mislead readers about reality. Founded in Fiction argues that this suspicion made early American writers especially attuned to one of fiction’s defining but often overlooked features—its ...