ABSTRACT
This chapter traces Oliver's position as an American sensational text, illustrating the extent to which Oliver fed America's ongoing hunger for titillating scenes of crime and violence. It then focuses on the novel's role in the rise of literature associated with the city; appearing right before the vogue of 'city fiction', Oliver helped establish the genre's forms and themes, including descriptions of squalor and the country as refuge. The chapter also explores the mixed reception of sensationalism in America, explaining how Dickens largely escaped the stigma of exploitationism attached to other writers. More broadly, situating Oliver within the larger frame of nineteenth-century American sensationalism blurs the line of demarcation between American literature and British literature, revealing a cross-fertilization between two ostensibly 'national' discourses. Scholarly examinations of American sensationalism include works such as Richard Slotkin's classic Regeneration Through Violence, which traces the long cultural history of violence in American colonial and antebellum culture.
