Expanding the American Mind: Books and the Popularization of Knowledge

Notes

191 ,฀ NOTES 1. NoN: ThE PrEfix ThaT ChaNgES WhaT—aNd hOW—WE rEad 1. Wayne a. Wiegand, Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey (Chicago: american Library association, 1996). 2. Carl Van doren, The American Novel (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 3. 3. Cathy davidson, “The Life and Times of Charlotte Temple,” in Reading in America : Literature and Social History, ed. Cathy davidson (Baltimore: Johns hopkins University Press, 1989), 147–79; geoffrey day, From Fiction to the Novel (New York: routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 76–110. 4. Steven Starker, Evil Influences: Crusades Against the Mass Media (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1989), chap. 4. The quotation is from “Moral and Political Tendency of the Modern Novels,” Church of England Quarterly Review 11 (1842): 287–88, quoted in Kate flint, The Woman Reader, 1837–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 12. an excellent account of opposition to fiction, the shift in attitudes toward the genre, and the value of novels to their readers is found in chaps. 3 and 4 of Cathy davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 5. hart, The Popular Book, 90. On the popularity of the novel in america, and its classifications, see Nina Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America (ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). 6. dee garrison, Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society, 1876–1920 (New York: free Press, 1979), 33–34, 61, 68, 91. 7. rebecca goldstein, “Carried from the Couch on the Wings of Enchantment,” New York Times, december 15, 2002; see also Esther Jane Carrier, Fiction in Public Libraries, 1876–1900 (New York: Scarecrow Press, 1965). 8. for an interesting analysis of the writing and reading of domestic novels, see helen Waite Papashvily, All the Happy Endings: A Study of the Domestic Novel in America, the Women Who Wrote It, the Women Who Read It, in the Nineteenth Century (New York: harper, 1956). 9. Edward Wyatt, “author is Kicked Out of Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club,” New York Times, January 27, 2006; Motoko rich, “gang Memoir, Turning Pages, is Pure fiction,” ibid., March 4, 2008; Motoko rich, “a family Tree of Literary fakes,” ibid., March 8, 2008; david Mehegan, “author admits Making Up Memoir of Surviving holocaust,” Boston Globe, february 28, 2008; Motoko rich and Joseph Berger, “false Memoir of holocaust is Canceled,” New York Times, december 28, 2008. 10. On the colonial period, see david d. hall, “readers and Writers in Early New England,” in History of the Book in America, vol. 1, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 117–51. 11. Paul C. gutjahr, “No Longer Left Behind: amazon.com, reader response, and the Changing fortunes of the Christian Novel in america,” Book History 5 (2002): 209–36. 12. One of the best general histories of american reading remains hart’s The Popular Book, and i have used it extensively. for information on bestsellers i have relied on frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1947), and alice Payne hackett and James henry Burke, 80 Years of Best Sellers, 1895–1975 (New York: Bowker, 1977). Mott compiled his lists by calculating 1 percent of the U.S. population for the relevant decade and, using data from earlier studies and publishers’ records, determining which titles sold at least that many copies. hackett and Burke compiled their lists from the bestseller lists in the trade magazine Publishers Weekly. for more recent periods i have used the New York Times bestseller lists. Bestseller data are notoriously inexact (see Laura J. Miller, “The Best-Seller List as Marketing Tool and historical fiction,” Book History 3 [2000]: 286–304), but for the present purposes these are certainly adequate. 13. davidson, Revolution and the Word, 18. 14. for an account of self-help books in the late nineteenth century see Judy hilkey, Character Is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America (Chapel hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 15. Charles a. Madison, Book Publishing in America (New York: Mcgraw-hill, 1966), 24. 16. “reminiscences of Simon Michael Bessie,” 1976, Oral history Project of Columbia University, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, N.Y., pp. 106–8 of microform transcript. 17.richardBrodhead,CulturesofLetters:ScenesofReadingandWritinginNineteenthCentury America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 22. 18. davidson, Revolution and the Word, 69. 19. On literary journalism, see Chris anderson, ed., Literary Nonfiction: Theory, Criticism, Pedagogy...