Cambridge University Press Chicago: A Literary History

Chicago occupies a central position in both the geography and literary history of the United States. From its founding in 1833 through to its modern incarnation, the city has served as both a thoroughfare for the nation's goods and a crossroads for its cultural energies. The idea of Chicago as a crossroads of modern America is what guides this literary history, which traces how writers have responded to a rapidly changing urban environment and labored to make sense of its place in - and implications for - the larger whole. In writing that engages with the world's first skyscrapers and elevated railroads, extreme economic and racial inequality, a growing middle class, ethnic and multiethnic neighborhoods, the Great Migration of African Americans, and the city's contemporary incarnation as a cosmopolitan urban center, Chicago has been home to a diverse literature that has both captured and guided the themes of modern America. Book Description The book provides an inclusive, engaging, innovative, and interdisciplinary overview of the often overlooked literary history of Chicago. About the Author Frederik Byrn Køhlert is associate professor of American Studies at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of The Chicago Literary Experience: Writing the City, 1893–1953 and Serial Selves: Identity and Representation in Autobiographical Comics.