Book contents
- The New Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies
- Twenty-First-Century Critical Revisions
- The New Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Harriet Wilson’s Lessons
- Chapter 2 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the New Civil War Literary Studies
- Chapter 3 The Global South
- Chapter 4 Making It New
- Chapter 5 Law, Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies, and the Black Formalist Tradition
- Chapter 6 Conjuring Nineteenth-Century Black Environmentalism
- Chapter 7 Transitioning Queer Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
- Chapter 8 New Materialisms and Scalar Collapse in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies
- Chapter 9 Nineteenth-Century Spanish-Language Textbooks and US American Literature
- Chapter 10 The Political Functions of Reconstruction Literature, Then and Now
- Chapter 11 Echoes from the Past, Archives of the Future
- Chapter 12 Beyond the Secularization Thesis
- Chapter 13 A Periodical Masquerade
- Chapter 14 Tasteful Sketches and Tasteless Ambition
- Chapter 15 Grounding Nineteenth-Century Studies in Indigenous Studies
- Chapter 16 Cultures of Data
- Chapter 17 Rethinking Critical Geographies
- Chapter 18 Rethinking Black Speculative Fiction
- Chapter 19 The Black Pacific
- Chapter 20 “Unfeeling Stone”
- Index
Chapter 13 - A Periodical Masquerade
The History of the Book in Nineteenth-Century America, Unbound
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2025
- The New Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies
- Twenty-First-Century Critical Revisions
- The New Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Harriet Wilson’s Lessons
- Chapter 2 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the New Civil War Literary Studies
- Chapter 3 The Global South
- Chapter 4 Making It New
- Chapter 5 Law, Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies, and the Black Formalist Tradition
- Chapter 6 Conjuring Nineteenth-Century Black Environmentalism
- Chapter 7 Transitioning Queer Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
- Chapter 8 New Materialisms and Scalar Collapse in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies
- Chapter 9 Nineteenth-Century Spanish-Language Textbooks and US American Literature
- Chapter 10 The Political Functions of Reconstruction Literature, Then and Now
- Chapter 11 Echoes from the Past, Archives of the Future
- Chapter 12 Beyond the Secularization Thesis
- Chapter 13 A Periodical Masquerade
- Chapter 14 Tasteful Sketches and Tasteless Ambition
- Chapter 15 Grounding Nineteenth-Century Studies in Indigenous Studies
- Chapter 16 Cultures of Data
- Chapter 17 Rethinking Critical Geographies
- Chapter 18 Rethinking Black Speculative Fiction
- Chapter 19 The Black Pacific
- Chapter 20 “Unfeeling Stone”
- Index
Summary
This essay uses concepts drawn from the field of New Materialism, which posits that material objects possess forms of agency that shape human culture rather than just being passively acted upon, to move the history of the book beyond common assumptions that “the book” is a physically coherent and obviously identifiable entity. Looking closely at how the transportation infrastructure of the nineteenth-century print market determined and complicated American understandings of what a book was, it uses the legal and aesthetic debates triggered by evolving distinctions between bound and unbound texts to explore the historically malleable nature of “the book.” Concentrating particularly on the US postal system, which constantly struggled to define and regulate the printed matter passing through it during the nineteenth century as publishers sought to access cheaper circulation rates by presenting book-like material in periodical formats, this study of quasi-books ranges from Washington Irving’s Sketch Book (1819–1820) through the “mammoth weeklies” of the 1840s to the “Library” series of the 1870s.
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- The New Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies , pp. 186 - 202Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025