Andrew Lawson is Lecturer in English at Leeds Metropolitan University. He is the author of Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle.

"Downwardly Mobile is innovative in its approach, clearly and pleasingly written, and it will be of great interest not only to scholars of realism but, more generally, to those active in American literary and cultural studies." --Amy Schrager Lang, author of The Syntax of Class: Writing Inequality in Nineteenth-Century America

"Downwardly Mobile is a strikingly original and erudite study: a significant accomplishment. Lawson's work represents one of the best instances I've seen of an emerging formation of scholarship that combines a variety of intellectual commitments that used to be thought incompatible: careful historicism (including local storytelling and big-picture analyses), loving attention to writerly style, respect for a greatly expanded canon, and easy interweaving of several strands of critical theory (Marxism/materialism, psychoanalysis, queer theory) without any intrusive terminology or apparatus." --Nancy Glazener, author of Reading for Realism: The History of a U. S. Literary Institution, 1850-1910

"Thoughtfully combines biography, economic history, and literary analysis to explore realism as a genre emerging from marketplace dislocations...Highly recommended." --Choice

"Lawson's book reminds us of the crucial and fundamental questions that must be asked whenever we talk about realism." --Review 19

"[Lawson's] advanced argument is solidly supported, innovative, and valuable to those interested not only in American realism but in cultural materialism, history, and social and economic movements." --Studies in American Naturalism

"Just as realist writers clarified the real, Lawson clarifies why realism emerged when it did. Like the IMF and its flowchart, or the realist novels themselves, Lawson helps us trace something -- the origins of literary realism -- that would otherwise remain obscure." --The Journal of American Studies

Andrew Lawson is Lecturer in English at Leeds Metropolitan University. He is the author of Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle.

"Downwardly Mobile is innovative in its approach, clearly and pleasingly written, and it will be of great interest not only to scholars of realism but, more generally, to those active in American literary and cultural studies." --Amy Schrager Lang, author of The Syntax of Class: Writing Inequality in Nineteenth-Century America

"Downwardly Mobile is a strikingly original and erudite study: a significant accomplishment. Lawson's work represents one of the best instances I've seen of an emerging formation of scholarship that combines a variety of intellectual commitments that used to be thought incompatible: careful historicism (including local storytelling and big-picture analyses), loving attention to writerly style, respect for a greatly expanded canon, and easy interweaving of several strands of critical theory (Marxism/materialism, psychoanalysis, queer theory) without any intrusive terminology or apparatus." --Nancy Glazener, author of Reading for Realism: The History of a U. S. Literary Institution, 1850-1910

"Thoughtfully combines biography, economic history, and literary analysis to explore realism as a genre emerging from marketplace dislocations...Highly recommended." --Choice

"Lawson's book reminds us of the crucial and fundamental questions that must be asked whenever we talk about realism." --Review 19

"[Lawson's] advanced argument is solidly supported, innovative, and valuable to those interested not only in American realism but in cultural materialism, history, and social and economic movements." --Studies in American Naturalism

"Just as realist writers clarified the real, Lawson clarifies why realism emerged when it did. Like the IMF and its flowchart, or the realist novels themselves, Lawson helps us trace something -- the origins of literary realism -- that would otherwise remain obscure." --The Journal of American Studies