Uncertain Chances

"[An] erudite...densely informative study." --The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin "Uncertain Chances is an adventurous, learned, and powerfully argued inquiry into the manifold ways in which the ideas of chance, indeterminacy, and probability energized the thinking of the most prominent authors of the antebellum era. Over and again well-known texts and authors appear in a surprising new light." --Eric Sundquist, Johns Hopkins University "Impressively wide-ranging and erudite, Uncertain Chances presents an original account of how antebellum American writers used chance to come to terms with doubt. Unlike the usual historical narrative, Lee's study persuasively argues that nineteenth-century America's exploration of the problem of doubt and the solution of probability was well underway before the Civil War and the pragmatism of Pierce, James, and Dewey." --Gregg Crane, University of Michigan "In this trenchant, wide-ranging, and witty book, Maurice Lee analyzes the intellectual affinity between Poe, Melville, Thoreau, Douglass, and Dickinson--who grappled with uncertainty--and the later philosophical pragmatism of writers such as Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Showing continuity, not simply disruption, across the Civil War, Lee rewrites nineteenth-century American literary and intellectual history." --Samuel Otter, University of California, Berkeley "Lee's theoretical sophistication and clear, direct prose proves a winning combination that will likely satisfy all readers...Essential." --Choice