Introduction: literary history as the history of "literature"
Organizing literature. Looking for literature in the eighteenth century ; The problem with poetry ; Phillis Wheatley and the transformation of poetry ; The genres of literature ; The two canons
Literature, civil society, and the state. Print, aesthetic autonomy, and the history of censorship ; Literature in the marketplace
Studying literature. Shakespeare, modern and antimodern ; Where Shakespeare was studied ; How literature was studied ; Taste, belles lettres, and the sublime ; Coleridge, Emerson, and the legacies of moral philosophy
Lost episodes from public literary culture. The St. Louis movement and the Concord School ; Dueling bards ; The Browning Society in the United States ; A Library of American literature
Literary species and academic toolkits ; Clash of the titans: novels versus poetry ; Crafting conflicts
Disciplinarity and beyond. Literature as disciplinary ; Literature as interdisciplinary ; Literature as antidisciplinary ; Coda.