American Literary Publishing in the Mid-nineteenth Century

This is a study of some of the central questions in literary publishing in mid-nineteenth-century North America and Britain, addressed through examination of the unusually rich archives of a unique publishing firm. Boston-based Ticknor and Fields, one of the pre-eminent literary publishers of its time, enjoyed close links with Britain, and also developed new production, distribution, and marketing skills as the settlement of North America pushed ever further west. Michael Winship has studied the firm's business records and publications in detail: he reveals what Ticknor and Fields published, its costs of production, the ways it marketed and distributed its books, and the profits it made. Winship goes on to explore the implications of the firm's work for the book trade in general, and to show how an investigation of Ticknor and Fields enriches our understanding of the literary and cultural history of Britain and North America.

"American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Ninteenth Century is an important contribution to our understanding of the business of the business and profession of literary publishing, and it will prove itself an even more valuable contribution when future scholars use its findings to move toward an assessment of the contribution of the publishing sector to the making of modern letters." Ezra Greenspan, Papers of thr Bibliographical Society of America, "What we have here...is a wonderful resource for future studies of mid-nineteenth-century American publishing history." Joel Myerson, An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies, "A valuable addition to the burgeoning field of the history of the book....the deeply researched tools of business analysis provided here should be of use to a wide range of cultural historians interested in further exploring links between commerce and culture within the history of the book." Alice Fahs, Journal of American History, "Parts of this important story have been told before,...but never so satisfactorily and coherently as in this remarkably learned and sensible book. 19th Century Literature