The Business of Letters : Authorial Economies in Antebellum America / Leon Jackson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jackson, Leon, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (200 p.)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Traditionally, scholars of authorship in antebellum America have approached their subject through the lens of professionalization, exploring the ways in which writing moved away from amateurism and into the capitalist marketplace. The Business of Letters breaks new ground by challenging the dominant professionalization model, with its vision of a single literary marketplace. Leon Jackson shows how antebellum authors participated in a variety of different economies including patronage, charity, gift exchange, and competition—each of which had its own rules and reciprocities, its own ethics and exchange rituals, and sometimes even its own currencies. Examining a variety of canonical and non-canonical authors, including women, slaves, and artisans, and drawing on theoretical approaches from anthropology, sociology, social history, and literary criticism, Jackson reveals authors to have been social agents whose acts of authorial exchange involved them in dense webs of community. The decisive transformation of the antebellum period, he concludes, was not from amateurism to professionalism, but, rather, from socially embedded exchange to impersonally conducted business.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction: The Business of The Business of Letters

1. From the Profession of Authorship to the Business of Letters

2. The Black Bard and the Black Market

3. Authorship and Gift Exchange

4. Toward a History of Literary Debt

5. Literary Competitions and the Culture of Emulation

Epilogue: From the Business of Letters to the Profession of Authorship

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 31. Jan 2022)

ISBN:

1-5036-2678-4

OCLC:

1294423325