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Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
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Austin, John Peter Nathaniel. "The Literary Compilation in Antebellum America: 1820-1850," Department of English and Comparative Literatures, Columbia University, October 2000.
Compilations of fiction constitute an important, if overlooked, element of the antebellum book trade. The forty year period between 1820 and 1850 saw the publication and success of Irving’s Sketch Book, the rise and Fall of the literary annual (compilations of prose fiction and poetry intended as Christmas and New Year’s gifts), and a minor explosion in the publication of single author collections and anthologies. This dissertation explores the appeal compilations had for publishers, editors, and authors, and it offers, through a series of case studies, an account of their place in American literary culture. To study the completion-perhaps the most important literary commodity of the antebellum period-is to study the history of the institutionalization and commercialization of American literature. In its changing forms, we see American literary culture in the process of defining itself, and we chart the shifting relations between art and commerce at a critical moment of national formation. Part one of the dissertation surveys the market in compilations, considers the origin of the form in Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, and examines the uses to which authors (Catharine Sedgwick and Lydia Child) and editor-anthologists (Evert Duyckinck and Rufus Griswold) put them. The four chapters constituting part two of the dissertation examine Hawthorne’s career as a writer of short fiction within the context of the compilations in which his work first appeared, particularly Samuel Goodrich’s popular annual, The Token-the young Hawthorne’s principal means of access into the literary field-but also magazines like The United States Magazine and Democratic Review and Godey’s Lady’s Book. Hawthorne’s short fiction-as well as that of rivals like Child and Sedgwick-must be understood within the context of the annuals and magazines in which it first appeared. By reconstructing the rich and hitherto neglected literary environment in which Hawthorne worked, we do more than provide the terms necessary for another interpretation of Hawthorne’s early career; we restore to view an essential, and often overlooked element of Hawthorne’s creativity as a writer of short fiction and provide a critical perspective on issues at the center of his career.
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