Maurice S. Lee

This book project shows how changing concepts of chance shape literary encounters with skepticism in the literature of Poe, Thoreau, Douglass, Melville, and Dickinson. Key contexts include intellectual advances (such as the rise of probability theory, social statistics, and evolution), as well as shifts in social practices involving chance (including insurance, gambling, medicine, and warfare). Nineteenth-century authors participate in these discourses, revealing the complex dynamics between literature, science, and culture.