This book explores the emergence of literary history and criticism in the Americas during the 18th century, focusing on natural history as a matrix for literary history and criticism, the geopolitical functions of literary criticism in the periodical press, and the recovery of manuscripts as a residual product of modernity.

The study questions the epistemological conflicts provoked by the manuscript status of a considerable part of 18th-century scholarship, in which the projects of an American modernity appear subjugated by and yet resilient to the power of the European printing press.