American Essay Serials from Franklin to Irving by Bruce Granger (review)

AMERICAN ESSAY SERIALS FROM FRANKLIN TO IRVING BY BRUCE GRANGER (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1978. vii-277 pages. $13.50.) For too many years, the periodical essay, among other important literary genres in colonial America, has fallen into neglect. However, with the publication of Bruce Granger's new book, this dry period in scholarship has come to an end. Granger traces the American literary serial in newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets from its appearance in 1722 through its development and eventual decline in 1811. Citing Franklin's "Silence Dogood" essays as initiating the serial essay in American periodicals, and Washington Irving's Salmagundi papers as parodying the tradition and presiding over its demise, he discusses fifty-one American serials and explains their popularity and importance in the eighteenth-century. In addition, Granger devotes individual chapters to Trumbull, Freneau, Dennie, Murray, and Wirt, and demonstrates the usefulness of the essay serial as a publishing outlet for colonial writers. His notes are complete, and those unfamiliar with the American literary serial will find a comprehensive checklist at the end of the book, as well as an especially valuable bibliography ofprimary and secondary sources. Granger's discussion of individual essays is outstanding. He includes in his witty and perceptive analysis generous portions of each serial, providing the reader with a compendium of eighteenth-century wit and humor. Especially humorous, as Granger explains, are the comic devices and motifs that characterize many of the serials: feuds that existed among periodical writers; earthy and vernacular personae that peopled the essays; battles ofthe sexes; delineations of regional American types; and early examples of American "literary criticism." Pointing out that the American essay serial was closely modeled on English periodical writing, Granger also explains how American essayists domesticated many of their topics to accommodate colonial audiences. Furthermore, by emphasizing the literary side of the serial, Granger charts its development from a manners and morals type of essay to its later form as the familiar essay, revealing that the serial, with its characteristic use of personae, was becoming heavily narrative by the beginning of the nineteenth century. In short, Granger's study is thorough and sound. Not only is this book a major contribution to the literary history of colonial America, but it also makes lively and entertaining reading. JEFFREY B. WALKER* •JEFFREY B. WALKER has published in Seventeenth-Century News, held ACLS and NEH grants, and is a member of the Committee for Bibliography for American Literature. He is completing a biography of Benjamin Church, the eighteenth-century American poet, and is preparing an edition ofeighteenth-century American poetry. 88VOL. 33, NO. 2 (SPRING 1979) ...