Reading for Reform: The Social Work of Literature in the Progressive Era
Laura R. Fisher


Paperback | Jun 2019 | University of Minnesota Press | 9781517903831 | 316pp | 216x140mm | RFB | AUD$44.99, NZD$54.99

Reading for Reform rewrites the literary history of late nineteenth and early twentieth century America, putting social reform institutions at the centre of literary and cultural analysis. It tells a new story about the fate of literary practice, and the idea of literature's practical value, during the very years that modernist authors were proclaiming art's autonomy from concepts of social utility.