Contents -- Preface -- Realism and Representation -- Balzac Invents the Nineteenth Century -- Dickens and Nonrepresentation -- Flaubert and the Scandal of Realism -- Courbet's House of Realism -- George Eliot's Delicate Vessels -- Zola's Combustion Chamber -- Unreal City -- Manet, Caillebotte, and Modern Life -- Henry James's Turn of the Novel -- Modernism and Realism -- The Future of Reality? -- References and Bibliographical Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index.