"There is Nothing So Effective as a Personal Canvass": Revaluing Nineteenth-Century American Subscription Books

Abstract

In the summer of 1884, Mrs. E. L. Harris of Slabe, Virginia, a small town north of Richmond, began selling Alfred Roman's Military Operations of General Beauregard by subscription for Harper and Brothers of New York. Mrs. Harris, the widow of David Bullock Harris, a Confederate officer who died while serving with General Beauregard, undertook subscription bookselling not to support herself and her ten children, but rather to earn money for a trip to her native England. After commencing her canvass of Military Operations with family and friends, Mrs. Harris traveled to Richmond, the first of many bookselling trips she undertook to the larger cities in Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland. The residents of these cities eagerly subscribed to Military Operations, even though they could easily frequent local bookstores to satisfy their reading needs. The subscribers were middleand upper-class people, including Confederate officers and their wives, attorneys, state legislators, and merchants, all of whom were part of Mrs. Harris's extended social network. Mrs. Harris ended her bookselling career in August 1888, four years after it began, when she left Slabe for an extended trip to England.' The outlines of Mrs. Harris's experience as a subscription bookseller give one pause. A woman whose mission was personal as well as economic, selling a subscription book produced by one of the most prestigious American

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