The History of the Book in America: A Survey from Colonial to Modern

Course Description

We will first examine the early trans-Atlantic trade in books, the beginning and early years of local print production, and the place of books, almanacs, and other printed documents in colonial British North America. Our focus will then shift to the establishment of a national book trade in an expanding United States during the industrial era, as well as to various alternatives to that trade. We will investigate the industrialization and mechanization of book production, methods of bookselling and distribution inside and outside the trade, control of the trade and barriers to entry, and reading patterns in the United States, including among African Americans and recent immigrants from eastern Europe and Asia. In the second half of the course, we will transition to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and discuss such developments as alternative and oppositional forms of publishing, the introduction of book clubs, mass-trade paperbacks, and the internet. We will close with a brief and necessarily speculative discussion of what the developments and trends we have traced mean for the future of books, publishing, and reading.

This course is intended for individuals broadly interested in the history of the book in America, but who have little formal training or exposure to the subject. The course will feature numerous hands-on sessions, such as working with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century newspapers and printing on hand presses. Participants will end the course with a firm grasp of technologies related to literacy, how they developed over time, and how publications were produced, distributed, and consumed. In their personal statements, applicants are encouraged to describe the nature of their developing interest in the history of the book, and (if relevant) explain briefly the causes of this interest and the purposes to which they propose to put the knowledge gained from the course.

---

Advance Reading List

Required Readings

Readings are listed in the order that they will be discussed during the seminar.

Darnton, Robert. Excerpt from “What Is the History of Books?” Daedalus 111 (Summer 1982): 65–69 + notes 81.

Raven, James. “The Scope of Book History.” In What Is the History of the Book?, 1–16 + notes 145–46. Medford, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2018.

Casper, Scott and Joan Shelley Rubin. “The History of the Book in America.” In The Oxford Companion to the Book, edited by Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen, vol. 1, 425–42. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Sencheyne, Jonathan. “Under Pressure: Reading Material Textuality in the Recovery of Early African American Print Work.” Arizona Quarterly 75 (Fall 2019): 109–32.

Adelman, Joseph M. “The Business and Economic World of the Late Colonial Printing Trade.” In Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789, 19–50 + notes 208–15. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.

Franklin, Benjamin. Excerpts from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Frank Woodworth Pine. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916. Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm.

Randall, Dudley. “Broadside Press: A Personal Chronicle.” In The Black Seventies, ed. Floyd B. Barbour, 138–48. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1970.

Hall, David D. “The World of Print and Collective Mentality in Seventeenth-Century New England.” Cultures of Print, 79–96. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.

Beales, Ross W. and E. Jennifer Monaghan. “Literacy and Schoolbooks.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 1: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, edited by Hugh Amory and David D. Hall, 380–87 + notes 594–600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Monaghan, E. Jennifer. “Reading for the Enslaved, Writing for the Free: Reflections on Liberty and Literacy.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 108 (1998): 309–41.

Round, Phillip H. “Being and Becoming Literate in the Eighteenth-Century Native Northeast.” In Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663–1880, 46–72 + notes 236–39. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Lazo, Rodrigo. “La Famosa Filadelfia.” In Letters from Filadelfia: Early Latino Literature and the Trans-American Elite, 25–53 + notes 234–38. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020.

Remer, Rosalind. “New Modes of Publishing in the Early Republic.” In Printers and Men of Capital, 69–99 + notes 175–80. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

Abbott, Jacob. Chapters 4–17 of The Harper Establishment: How the Story Books Are Made. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1855.

Groves, Jeffrey D. “Trade Communication.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 3: The Industrial Book, edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, 130–39 + notes 440–41. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Sopcak-Joseph, Amy. “Reconstructing and Gendering the Distribution Networks of Godey’s Lady’s Book in the Ninteenth Century.” Book History 22 (2019): 161–95.

Casper, Scott E. “Other Variations on the Trade.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 3: The Industrial Book, edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, 203-223 + notes 450–54. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Sinche, Bryan. “Introduction.” In Published by the Author: Self-Publication in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature, 1–36 + notes 201–06. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2024.

Miller, Sally M. “Distinctive Media: The European Ethnic Press in the United States.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 4: Print in Motion, edited by Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, 299–311 + notes 584–86. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

Danky, James P. “Reading, Writing, and Resisting: African American Print Culture.” In A History of the Book in America, Volume 4: Print in Motion, edited by Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, 339–58 + notes 589–93. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

Matthews, Kristin L. “Making Reading Popular: Cold War Literacy and Classics Illustrated.” Book History 22 (2019): 320–41.

The Underground Press Syndicate. “How to Publish Your Very Own Underground Newspaper.” New York: Free Ranger Press, 1971.

West, E. James. “‘The Books You’ve Waited For’: Ebony Magazine, the Johnson Book Division, and Black History in Print.” In Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print, edited by Brigitte Fielder and Jonathan Senchyne, 62–81. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2019.

Miller, Laura J. “From Dry Goods Merchant to Internet Mogul: Bookselling through American History.” In Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption, 23–54 + notes 241–51. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Cordell, Ryan. “Programmable Type: The Craft of Printing, the Craft of Code.” In Teaching the History of the Book, edited by Matteo Pangallo and Emily b. Todd, 63–73. Amherst and Boston, University of Massachusetts Press, 2023.

---

Course Evaluations

---

Course History