Homicide in American Fiction, 1798–1860

David Brion Davis is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University, where he is founder and director emeritus of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. This was the first book of Davis's long and distinguished career. He received the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his second book, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, which was also originally published by Cornell University Press. His 2014 book The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction.

Homicide in American Fiction, 1798–1860 is an excellent reference work, one that I will use often in determining the full implication of such acts as murder and seduction, not only in pre–Civil War fiction, but also in social and psychological attitudes of the same period.- Philip Durham (American Quarterly) Because the approach to an old problem is new, the book is stimulating. Because its treatment is not definitive it is provocative. It is the sort of writing that might well be used to initiate interdisciplinary discussions on both content and method.- Albert Morris (American Sociological Review)