To open up a subject that was before thought unrewarding, the writer must at the outset convince the reader that a misunderstanding exists. For example, to announce that one's subject is provincialism in American literature is probably to raise an expectation that the discussion to follow will occupy itself only with a small and rejected corner of the national literary culture. So long as provincialism is understood mainly as the disabling liability of backwoods regionalists or self-taught writers of the second rank, such an expectation would indeed be warranted. But the argument of this book is at once broader in scope and, I hope, much less patronizing than such ordinary conceptions of the provincial would allow.

The argument, in brief, is that provincial conditions were not the special case in America before the Civil War but, in fact, quite the ordinary context for artistic expression; as a consequence, they seem largely to account for what appears characteristic or nationally distinctive in the literature. The argument is, further, that these conditions, historically associated with frontier patterns of settlement and cultural transmission, could at times be enriching challenges to American artists, who met them with differing ideals, differing temperaments, and differing strategies.

A number of colleagues at several institutions shared their wisdom with me, which makes this book that much better.