Great American Novel

This article is about the Great American Novel as a concept. For other uses, see Great American Novel (disambiguation).

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe is commonly cited as the Great American Novel—John William De Forest saw it as the closest possible novel.

The Great American Novel (sometimes abbreviated as GAN) is the term for a canonical novel that generally embodies and examines the essence and character of the United States. The term was coined by John William De Forest in an 1868 essay and later shortened to GAN. De Forest noted that the Great American Novel had most likely not been written yet.

Practically, the term refers to a small number of books that have historically been the nexus of discussion, including Moby-Dick (1851), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), The Great Gatsby (1925), and Gone with the Wind (1936). Exactly what novel or novels warrant the title is without consensus and an assortment have been contended as the idea has evolved and continued into the modern age, with fluctuations in popular and critical regard. William Carlos Williams, Clyde Brion Davis and Philip Roth have written novels about the Great American Novel—titled as such—Roth's in the 1970s, a time of prosperity for the concept.

Equivalents to and interpretations of the Great American Novel have arisen. Writers and academics have commented upon the term's pragmatics, the different types of novels befitting of title and the idea's relation to race and gender.