A literary history that considers works by Cotton Mather, Ben Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Edith Wharton, and others to illustrate the relationship between adoption and nation-building in American culture.

Carol J. Singley is Professor of English at Rutgers University-Camden. She is the author of Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit and the coeditor, with Caroline Levander, of The American Child: A Cultural Studies Reader.

Introduction
1 Abandoned and Adopted in a New World
2 Problems of Patrimony: Benjamin Franklin and Ann Sargent Gage
3 Adoption Averted in The Scarlet Letter
4 Plotting Adoption: Dependence and Independence
5 Child Saving, Nation Building: The Wide, Wide World and The Lamplighter
6 Servitude and Homelessness: Harriet Wilson's Our Nig
7 The Limits of Nurture: Louisa May Alcott's Adoption Fiction
8 Charity Begins and Ends at Home: Edith Wharton's Summer
Index