The Novel of PurposeIn the nineteenth century, Great Britain and the United States shared a single literary marketplace that linked the reform movements, as well as the literatures, of the two nations. The writings of transatlantic reformersantislavery, temperance, and suffrage activistsgave novelists a new sense of purpose and prompted them to invent new literary forms. The result was a distinctively Anglo American realism, in which novelists, conceiving of themselves