The Moral Economies of American Authorship: Reputation, Scandal, and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Marketplace
Susan M. Ryan
Oxford University Press, 2016
- Investigates the moral authority of authorship in nineteenth-century America, focusing on the ways in which authorial character circulated as a kind of literary property
- Surveys the circulation of authors’ moral currency across a wide range of printed materials, including prefaces, dedications, and other paratexts as well as book reviews, advertisements, and editorials that appeared in the era’s magazines and newspapers
- Analyzes the construction and repair of particular authors’ reputations (e.g., James Fenimore Cooper, Mary Prince, Elizabeth Keckley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and E.D.E.N. Southworth),