From the Inside Flap:
"One of the best works on the law and literature. . . . Far from narrow, Thomas demonstrates, the concept of contract embraces a remarkable domain of thinking and writing about society in the late nineteenth century."—Eric J. Sundquist, author of To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature
"This book will take its place as an indispensable text for theorists in the law, in philosophy, in social history, and in literary studies. . . . Thomas sees to it that social issues central to the last half of the nineteenth century are brought to bear upon our sense of current affairs."—Martha Banta, author of Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History
"A lucid, learned, and important book. . . . With this study, Thomas once again establishes his position as a leader in the field of law and literature."—Amy Stanley, University of Chicago
"A masterful and authoritative account of the intricate relations between literature and law in later nineteenth-century America. . . . Focusing on textual moments during the 1880s and 1890s when the failures of contract law and its promissory basis were dramatically revealed, Thomas casts a richly illuminating as well as searching light on the symbiosis of literary and legal thinking in the period, and thereby manages to construct what is potentially a different narrative configuration of later nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural history."—Giles Gunn, author of Thinking across the American Grain: Ideology, Intellect, and the New Pragmatism
"This book showed me a whole new way of reading late nineteenth and early twentieth century American literature. All of the chapters are strikingly original interpretations of the authors discussed. . . . The chapters on Howells and Chesnutt are absolutely brilliant and original. They tactfully but persuasively show the error of many previous readings and establish an extremely subtle and powerful way of understanding Howells' particular sense of the contingency of both personal and social life in the United States at that time and the opportunities for responsible innovation and commitment this contingency, in a precarious way, allowed....A major book on American culture... certain to become a crucial point of reference for students and scholars of United States fiction in this period."—J. Hillis Miller, author of Topographies
From the Back Cover:
"One of the best works on the law and literature. . . . Far from narrow, Thomas demonstrates, the concept of contract embraces a remarkable domain of thinking and writing about society in the late nineteenth century." (Eric J. Sundquist, author of To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.