Ezra Tawil teaches in the English Department of the University of Rochester. He is author of The Making of Racial Sentiment: Slavery and the Birth of the Frontier Romance and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature.

"[Tawil's] fresh and illuminating readings of major works of the 1780s and '90s will make Literature, American Style an important book for early Americanists. But what will make this book important for a wide range of scholars working on the long history of American literature is its reframing of the issue of literary Americanness. One of the signature achievements of Literature, American Style is the synthesis it provides of the divergent lines of scholarship focused on national distinctiveness and transatlantic indebtedness, respectively." (Early American Literature) "[A] masterful treatise . . . {An] excellent, learned study . . . Literature, American Style makes a substantial contribution to the study of early national literary culture from which future scholars of the period will greatly profit." (American Literary History) "[F]or readers interested in this dialectic and in parsing the tangled literary relationship between Britain and the United States, Tawil's book is essential reading. His own lucid style makes Literature, American Style a pleasure to read." (Studies in the Novel) "In Literature, American Style, Tawil's subject matter is, itself, a crucial intervention in the field of American literary studies because it foregrounds something-the 'choice of words and the manner of arranging them'-that is often ignored . . . What Tawil does remarkably well, and vitally so for the field, is to put a finer point on the intricacies of transatlantic exchange, literary style, and cultural nationalism that critics have too often painted with a broad brush." (Soundings) "Ezra Tawil's Literature, American Style confronts one of the most fundamental problems in the study of US culture: how and why do we claim 'a national tradi-tion' of American literature that can be distinguished from other literatures in English . . . Tawil provides a deeper historical, philosophical and literary context for the enduring allure of the unpolished voice on both sides of the Atlantic.." (Literature & History) "This is a beautifully written, well-structured, and impressively informed study of early national American literature. Drawing on pre-romantic aesthetic philosophy and deft stylistic analysis, Ezra Tawil succeeds in elucidating a significant late eighteenth-century cultural paradox: the transatlantic roots of American literary originality." (Paul Downes, University of Toronto) "Literature, American Style is a timely and innovative account of some very old-fashioned ideas in American literary studies-nationalism, originality, and style. In Ezra Tawil's engaging, lucid prose, they come alive in ways that reveal American 'exceptionalism' to be a far more important and complex cultural strategy than we have understood it to be." (Edward Cahill, Fordham University)

• Introduction. Style and the CisatlanticChapter 1. To Form a More Perfect Language: Noah Webster's American-Style EnglishChapter 2. Transatlantic Correspondences: CrÈvecoeur and the Incorrect StyleChapter 3. "New Forms of Sublimity": Charles Brockden Brown and the Irregular StyleChapter 4. "Homespun Habits": Seduction, Sentiment, and the Artless StyleCoda. Stock and SoilNotesIndexAcknowledgments

Ezra Tawil teaches in the English Department of the University of Rochester. He is author of The Making of Racial Sentiment: Slavery and the Birth of the Frontier Romance and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature.

"[Tawil's] fresh and illuminating readings of major works of the 1780s and '90s will make Literature, American Style an important book for early Americanists. But what will make this book important for a wide range of scholars working on the long history of American literature is its reframing of the issue of literary Americanness. One of the signature achievements of Literature, American Style is the synthesis it provides of the divergent lines of scholarship focused on national distinctiveness and transatlantic indebtedness, respectively." (Early American Literature) "[A] masterful treatise . . . {An] excellent, learned study . . . Literature, American Style makes a substantial contribution to the study of early national literary culture from which future scholars of the period will greatly profit." (American Literary History) "[F]or readers interested in this dialectic and in parsing the tangled literary relationship between Britain and the United States, Tawil's book is essential reading. His own lucid style makes Literature, American Style a pleasure to read." (Studies in the Novel) "In Literature, American Style, Tawil's subject matter is, itself, a crucial intervention in the field of American literary studies because it foregrounds something-the 'choice of words and the manner of arranging them'-that is often ignored . . . What Tawil does remarkably well, and vitally so for the field, is to put a finer point on the intricacies of transatlantic exchange, literary style, and cultural nationalism that critics have too often painted with a broad brush." (Soundings) "Ezra Tawil's Literature, American Style confronts one of the most fundamental problems in the study of US culture: how and why do we claim 'a national tradi-tion' of American literature that can be distinguished from other literatures in English . . . Tawil provides a deeper historical, philosophical and literary context for the enduring allure of the unpolished voice on both sides of the Atlantic.." (Literature & History) "This is a beautifully written, well-structured, and impressively informed study of early national American literature. Drawing on pre-romantic aesthetic philosophy and deft stylistic analysis, Ezra Tawil succeeds in elucidating a significant late eighteenth-century cultural paradox: the transatlantic roots of American literary originality." (Paul Downes, University of Toronto) "Literature, American Style is a timely and innovative account of some very old-fashioned ideas in American literary studies-nationalism, originality, and style. In Ezra Tawil's engaging, lucid prose, they come alive in ways that reveal American 'exceptionalism' to be a far more important and complex cultural strategy than we have understood it to be." (Edward Cahill, Fordham University)

• Introduction. Style and the CisatlanticChapter 1. To Form a More Perfect Language: Noah Webster's American-Style EnglishChapter 2. Transatlantic Correspondences: CrÈvecoeur and the Incorrect StyleChapter 3. "New Forms of Sublimity": Charles Brockden Brown and the Irregular StyleChapter 4. "Homespun Habits": Seduction, Sentiment, and the Artless StyleCoda. Stock and SoilNotesIndexAcknowledgments