In the Company of Books: Literature and Its "Classes" in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

To enhance knowledge of the business side of U.S. letters between the 1850s and the Spanish-American War, Sarah Wadsworth focuses attention not on readers but on readerships as forecasted, shaped, and put to use by high-ranking members of the U.S. world of letters. Attention to readerships could seem the natural object of histories of literature, yet Wads-worth is among the first to scour the archives for information about the process by which fiction lovers clump into distinctive, if often overlapping, consumption-cohorts. In six case studies of cohort formation, In the Company of Books helps “demonstrate how market segmentation effectively led to new roles for the book in American culture, the innovation of literary genres, and new relationships between books and readers” (p. 9). Here as elsewhere, Wadsworth's claims are not shy: “when publishers and authors segmented particular groups of readers into distinct categories and targeted them with specific types of books,” she argues, “they effectively created or fashioned each readership by summoning its members together” (p. 10). Alert readers will note that the difference between “fashioned” and “created” is blurred by the adverb that implies targets were hit, as planned. What In the Company of Books deftly investigates, though, are hopes such as those Nathaniel Hawthorne expressed for the fiction he wrote for children; predictions such as those Mark Twain shared in correspondence about novels that hovered between marketing categories; and advice such as the strictures Louisa May Alcott laid down in a story called “Pan-sies.” Thoroughly researched, too, is a chapter on genealogical ties between Daisy Miller (1878) and travel literature not previously associated with Henry James. Chapters that are attentive to decisions made by publishers, rather than authors, most fully bear out the idea of summoning and claims about realizing their desired effect; noteworthy in this respect are Wadsworth's insights about the popular Seaside Library and the delight many found in “blue and gold” books associated with prestige publishing.

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