The Columbia History of the American Novel by Emory Elliott
Published 1991 · 200,000 words · about 17 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Columbia History of the American Novel to read?
The Columbia History of the American Novel scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- Accessible scholarly prose with consistent terminology across contributors.
- Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
- Abstraction: 62 out of 100
- Historical survey with contextual and thematic analysis.
- Information density: 78 out of 100
- High density of literary-historical information across a vast scope.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Direct survey and analysis throughout.
- Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
- Informational register.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Scholarly neutrality prevails.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Each chapter reaches its conclusions.
- Structural complexity: 42 out of 100
- Multi-author collection organized chronologically and by subgenre.
How The Columbia History of the American Novel is regarded
The Columbia History of the American Novel holds a literary regard score of 73 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.