1. American Realism 1865-1915

2.  Rapid expansion in population, settlement of the West, transportation, communication and curiosity about people living in other regions, especially in the Midwest and the Far West

3.  Rise of industrialism-Twain’s “Gilded Age”

4.  Writers turned away from Romanticism and strove to portray life as it was actually lived

5.  Realism: “slice of life”; a movement which sought to depict real life as faithfully and accurately as possible and focused on the lives of ordinary people

6.  Naturalism: a movement that went one step further by showing life as the inexorable working out of natural forces beyond our power to control

7.  Regionalism: literature that emphasizes a specific geographic setting and that makes use of the speech and manners of the people who live there (also called local color writing)