A comparative analysis of 184 Canadian and American popular and high-culture newels suggests the inadequacy of the traditional understanding of national literary differences as reflecting unique national characters. I present an alternative understanding of national literatures that considers variation in production contexts and literary use across types of literature. In brief, I argue that popular-culture novels differ little between the Canada and the U.S. precisely because they are shaped by similar mass-market strategies and read by similar audiences. My data on the cross-national differences in the timing and content of canonical literatures, on the other hand, suggests that such novels have a highly symbolic value tied to the development of the nation-state and are shaped by elite interests in national identity construction.