H-135. The History of the Book in Antebellum America - Advance Reading List

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  • Required

    Gross, Robert A. & Mary Kelley, eds. A History of the Book in America, Volume 2: An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Especially chapter 2 (pp. 75-171).

    Casper, Scott E., Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, & Michael Winship. A History of the Book in America, Volume 3: The Industrial Book, 1840–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Especially the chapters 1 (pp. 40–69) & 4 (pp. 117–57).

    These are two volumes from the standard modern scholarly history of the book in America, and students are encouraged to browse these and other volumes in the series for further additional reading. Ambitious students are also encouraged to read one or more of the suggested works.

  • Suggested

    Students who wish to delve deeper into the book trade of the antebellum period may wish to peruse one or more of the following works:

    Barnes, James J. Authors, Publishers and Politicians: The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement, 1815–1854.  Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974.

    Charvat, William. Literary Publishing in America, 1790–1850. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959; reprinted Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.

    Exman, Eugene. The Brothers Harper. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

    Greenspan, Ezra. George Palmer Putnam: Representative American Publisher. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

    Kaser, David. Messrs. Carey & Lea of Philadelphia: A Study in the History of the Booktrade. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957.

    Remer, Rosalind. Printers and Men of Capital: Philadelphia Book Publishers and the New Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

    Silver, Rollo G. The American Printer, 1787–1825. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967.

    Sutton, Walter. The Western Book Trade: Cincinnati as a Nineteenth-Century Publishing and Book-Trade Center.  Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1961.

    Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1963.

    Winship, Michael. American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.