Literary Dollars and Social Sense

A People's History of the Mass Market Book

Ronald J. Zboray, Mary Saracino Zboray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136729607
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Prior to the Civil War, publishing in America underwent a transformation from a genteel artisan trade supported by civic patronage and religious groups to a thriving, cut-throat national industry propelled by profit. Literary Dollars and Social Sense represents an important chapter in the historical experience of print culture, it illuminates the phenomenon of amateur writing and delineates the access points of the emerging mass market for print for distributors consumers and writers. It challenges the conventional assumptions that the literary public had little trouble embracing the new literary marketing that emerged at mid-century. The book uncover the tensions that author's faced between literature's role in the traditional moral economy and the lure of literary dollars for personal gain and fame. This book marks an important example in how scholars understand and conduct research in American literature.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Social Authors and Disseminators in the Age of the Mass Market
• 1 In and Out of Print
• 2 Textual Appearances
• 3 From the Outside Looking In
• 4 Inside and Outside the Literary Marketplace
• Conclusion “The Privilege of Going On”
• Appendix 1 Charlotte Forten's “To a Beloved Friend; On Receiving a Tiny Bouquet of Wild Flowers from the Hills of our Dear New England”
• Appendix 2 Lucy Larcom's “Mississippi and Missouri”
• Appendix 3 Excerpt From John Townsend Trowbridge's Martin Merrivale
• Abbreviations
• NOTES
• Index