Popular History and the Literary Marketplace, 1840–1920

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments The inspiration for this book came from a series of questions posed by the late Harvard professor of history John Clive to students in his rigorous course on the history of historical writing. As an advanced graduate student, I audited this course—twice, in fact—without completing it; the distractions of teaching and dissertation writing were simply too great to allow me to fulfill the obligations of the syllabus, although I learned a great deal from the sections I did finish. It was Clive’s practice to begin the course by passing out a list of pertinent questions for students to keep in mind as they read dozens of works by important European and American historians,from Edward Gibbon to Henry Adams. The reading list was intimidating, to be sure—any course that begins with the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire must be, I suppose —but the questions treating various aspects of historical texts as literary productions,including subject matter,style,structure,historical argument and explanation, were especially challenging. “What is the role of human reason in these narratives?” Clive asked students. “How does the historian depict character?” “What is the tone of the history? Serious? Ironical? Polemical? Matter-of-fact?” “Is description sometimes synonymous with explanation?” and so on. I’ll never forget Professor Clive’s reaction when I went to see him for the second time to say I would not be able to complete the course. “Mr. Pfitzer,” he said in his quaint manner,“You’re going to have to face these questions at some point, you know.” And he was right, of course. Popular History and the Literary Marketplace, 1840–1920 is my effort to offer answers to these important matters and to fulfill my unmet obligations to Professor Clive. Further inspiration for this book derived from recent trends in historiography over the last two decades. Like many graduate students in the 1980s interested in the literary underpinnings of historical works, I found my way eventually to Hayden White, who challenged me to recognize the “deep structure of the historical imagination” in dominant linguistic forms. White’s “metahistorical approach” led me to works by Robert J. Berkhofer Jr., David Harlan,and Gertrude Himmelfarb,a very diverse group of scholars,to be sure, who elaborated on or took issue with White’s controlling ideas about the literary turn in historical writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their collective writings caused me to reflect more deeply on the narrative structure of history. In reading their works I was compelled to consider explicitly the role of memory in the preservation of history as well as the mechanisms by which we construct narratives about the past and the standards by which we determine what constitutes historical truth. I also came under the influence of scholars interested in the history of the book, Michael Winship, in particular, who elaborated in meaningful ways the power of texts to shape cultural meaning . Finally, I was affected profoundly in my thinking by scholars and former mentors David Donald, Alan Brinkley, Charlie Bassett, and Richard Moss, all of whom have been productive teachers and scholars of things historical.From the late 1980s to the present, I have had the benefit of the wisdom of my Skidmore College colleagues in American studies, Mary Lynn, Joanna Zangrando, Dan Nathan, Joshua Woodfork, Richard Kim, Janet Casey, and Nancy Otrembiak , who advised me in various capacities with respect to this book and other matters of importance to the profession while I was writing it. Thank you also to my friends David Baum, Neil Jumonville, and Gordon Hylton, who have taken time over the years to discuss this project with me during lengthy phone conversations, between pitches at baseball and softball tournaments, and during substitutions at noontime basketball games. In completing my work, I benefited from the helpful advice of members of several professional organizations who were generous enough to comment on my “popular history” presentations, including those from the Great Lakes Association of Colleges and Universities, the Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture Association, the American Historical Association, and the American Studies Association. Deans Chuck Joseph, Muriel Poston, and Mark Hofmann and members of the Faculty Development Committee at Skidmore College provided various travel stipends and a Major Projects Completion Grant for two researchtripstotheHuntingtonLibraryinSanMarino,California.Ihavemade extensive use of the personal papers of popular historians, publishers, book agents, and readers scattered across the country as well. Some of these materials...