Table of Contents

Introduction -Crash and Burn
Chapter One -A “damsel-errant in quest of adventures”: E.D.E.N. Southworth, Sensation, and the Law
Chapter Two -Crash Lit: Trains, Pains, and Automobiles
Chapter Three -“Hurts That Will Not Heal”: Theodore Dreiser, Masculinity, and Railroad Labor
Chapter Four -Burning Down the House: Comets, Hurricanes, and the Fire to Come
Chapter Five -The Tremblor: Disaster and Vulnerability, San Francisco, 1906

About the Author

Jennifer Travis is associate professor of English at St. John’s University.

Reviews

Travis (St. John’s Univ.) bookends this innovative study of environmental disasters and apocalyptic circumstances in American literature of the late 19th century with Fenimore Cooper’s The Crater (1847) and the San Francisco earthquake and fire (1906), along the way scrutinizing little-known works by canonical authors and neglected others. Readers may find surprises here: E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mark Twain, Jack London, Kate Chopin, Theodore Dreiser, W. E. B. Du Bois—all wrote “crash" narratives about fires, human monstrosities, celestial events, earthquakes, and so on. Travis does not portray trauma for its own sake; she details how writers created scenes of fearful dangers brought about by nature. In her fifth and final chapter, “The Tremblor,” she restores appreciation for Mary Hunter Austin’s essay about the San Francisco earthquake and H. T. Lamey’s insurance theme in his novel Side Lights (1906). Travis contributes to the trend in spiritualist and machine-inspired culture history examined by scholars such as Bridget Bennett (Transatlantic Spiritualism and Nineteenth Century American Literature, CH, Jan'08, 45-2458) and Katherine Biers (Virtual Modernism, CH, Jun'14, 51-5441), looking at how catastrophe, technology, and social justice intersect. Buttressed by relevant scholarship and prodigious references, Travis's argument will make a significant and lasting imprint on American cultural studies.



Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.
*Choice Reviews*

Jennifer Travis’s deeply-researched study examines how nineteenth-century Americans sought to guard against the very technology that they hoped would keep them safe. Moving from sentimental novels to medical, sociological and business texts, Travis skillfully charts Americans’ ongoing fear of vulnerability, and the lengths to which they would go to avoid it. This book has much to offer nineteenth-century scholars, but It also offers rich insight into our current struggle to negotiate technology’s risks and rewards.
*Anna Mae Duane, University of Connecticut*

Jennifer Travis has written an important, groundbreaking book that will generate much discussion. Her command of scholarship beyond literary studies is extraordinary.
*Paul Sorrentino, Virginia Tech*