American Writers and the Picturesque Tour: The Search for National Identity, 1790-1860

A critical survey of the picturesque tour in national literature from Charles Brockden Brown to writers of the American Renaissance, detailing how American writers' attitudes toward this European aesthetic shaped their creation of an American literary nationalism. Contains chapters on Brown's Edgar Huntly , Hawthorne's ironic traveler, Poe's picturesque-hunters, and Thoreau as picturesque tourist. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.