The Profession of Authorship in America, 1800-1870

Download or read book The Profession of Authorship in America, 1800-1870 written by William Charvat and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focuses on the complex relations between author, publisher and contemporary reading public in 19th-century America; in particular, the emergence of Irving and Cooper as America's first successful literary entrepreneurs, how Poe's and Melville's successes and failures affected their writing, the popularization of poetry in the 1830s and 1840s, the role of the literary magazine in the 1840s and 1850s, and the beginnings of book promotion. It pays particular attention to the way social and economic forces helped to shape literary works.