H-135. The History of the Book in Antebellum America
James N. Green Michael Winship
Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 23–28 July 2023
Format: in person, University of Pennsylvania Libraries in Philadelphia, PA
Fee: $1,395
This course will focus on the emergence of a national trade publishing system in the United States by examining the production, distribution, and reception of books and other printed materials during the years from 1800 to 1860, with particular emphasis on the crucial transition period of 1819 to 1837. Among the themes that will be explored are how the publishing and book trades established and developed themselves over this period; the introduction of new production and distribution technologies; changes in the economics of publishing and how they affected the price of books and the practice of discounting; the development of different markets for books and the various ways books reached readers as the nation expanded westward.
Students will have an opportunity to study many examples that illustrate important features of the history of the American antebellum book. Using digital copies of manuscript sources they will also study the business practices of printers and publishers, and material practices of authorship and reading. Students will examine copies of scarce or rare material, including works by African Americans and cheap print aimed at urban and working-class readers. Students will also be introduced to important reference works and other resources for the study of American book history. The class will be run as a seminar, so students will be encouraged to discuss their own interests and research projects with the group as a whole.
This course is aimed at scholars, librarians, collectors, and others who are already familiar with the broad outlines of American book history but who wish to focus on what is specific to the book culture of the antebellum period. While there are no prerequisites, the course is designed to complement James N. Green’s History of the Book in America, c.1700–1830 (H-70) and Michael Winship’s The American Book in the Industrial Era, 1820–1940 (H-50) by focusing specifically on the shift from the colonial to the industrial book; the course supplements at a more advanced level the broad overview of the introductory course The History of the Book in America: A Survey from Colonial to Modern (H-15). In their personal statement, applicants are requested to summarize briefly their background in the field, current research projects, and topics or issues that they would particularly like the course to address.
Click here to view the course description for the virtual version of this course, “Key Moments in the History of the Book in the Antebellum United States.”
Course History
Faculty
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James N. Green
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Michael Winship
James N. Green
James Green is Librarian Emeritus of the Library Company of Philadelphia, where he has worked for more than 30 years. He contributed three long essays on American printing and publishing to the first two volumes of the collaborative History of the Book in America, published under the auspices of the American Antiquarian Society, and he is the author, with Peter Stallybrass, of Benjamin Franklin, Writer and Printer (Oak Knoll, 2006).
Full Bio »Michael Winship
Michael Winship is Iris Howard Regents Professor of English II (emeritus) at the University of Texas at Austin and edited the final three volumes of the nine-volume Bibliography of American Literature. He is the author of American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields (1995) and has published widely on the nineteenth-century American book and publishing trades. He was an editor of and contributor to The Industrial Book, 1840–1880 and contributor to Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880–1940 (volumes 3 and 4 of A History of the Book in America), and served on that series’ editorial board. He has taught annually at RBS since 1983.
Courses Formerly Offered
- Descriptive Bibliography, 1820–1914 (1989–1993)
- History of the American Book (1987–1988, with Edwin Wolf 2d)
- Bibliography of 19th-Century American Books (1986)
- Publishers’ Bindings, 1780–1910 (1984–1985, with Sue Allen)
- The 19th-Century Book (1983); The 19th-Century English & American Book (1984); Sources for the Study of the 19th-Century English & American Book (1985) | co-taught with Michael Turner