American and English Fiction in the Nineteenth Century: An Antigenre Critique and Comparison

What is the distinctive difference between American and English fiction? Genre critics, beginning with Trilling and Chase, have answered by proposing a dichotomy between the "romantic" American tradition and the "novelistic" English tradition. They have argued that American writers did not have before them the complex society the English did and consequently have not drawn as extensively upon social observation. Nicolaus Mills challenges this widely-held position by showing that it does not accurately measure the differences between 19th century American and English fiction and that the distinctions between them are not as pervasive or substantial as the genre critics claim. The critics can make most illuminating discoveries about the uniqueness of American fiction if he analyzes it in comparison rather than in isolation. Such an analysis is undertaken in the last four chapters of this study, which rightly compares the two traditions where they are closest: Cooper's THE PRAIRIE with Scott's ROB ROY, Hawthorne's SCARLET LETTER with George Eliot's ADAM BEDE, Melville's PIERRE with Hardy's JUDE THE OBSCURE, HUCKEBERRY FINN with GREAT EXPECTATIONS.