In this book John Limon examines the various ways American authors have approached the writing of fiction in an age increasingly dominated by science.

1. Toward a disciplinary intellectual history; 2. Brown's epistemology; 3. Poe's methodology; 4. Hawthorne's technology; 5. After the revolutions: Brown and Dreiser, Poe and Pynchon, Hawthorne and Mailer.