North America
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David Faflik. The Literary Gift in Early America.
Faflik’s book examines the gift book as a carrier of exchange—between giver and receiver, publisher and author, and author and reader—in the form of five reception histories.
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Christine Larson. Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing & Success.
Christine Larson’s book shines a light on romance writers’ extraordinary success in the realm of electronic self-publishing.
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Mark Alan Mattes, ed. Handwriting in Early America: A Media History.
In 2010, changes to American education standards eliminated the mandate to teach handwriting in public schools. As a result many states dropped the practice in classrooms. Yet in recent years…
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Adam Gordon. Prophets, Publicists, and Parasites: Antebellum Print Culture and the Rise of the Critic.
Each chapter of Prophets, Publicists, and Parasites centers on a particular nineteenth-century American critic: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rufus Griswold, Edgar Allan Poe, Margaret Fuller, and Frederick Douglass. The book’s introduction…
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Recchio, Thomas. The Novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett: In “the World of Actual Literature.” New York: Anthem Press, 2020.
Upon closing the final pages of The Novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett In ‘the World of Actual Literature,” I am spellbound. As a reader of Burnett’s children’s works, Recchio brings…
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Tessa Jordan. Feminist Acts: Branching Out Magazine and the Making of Canadian Feminism.
“‘If you wish to write about your children, may we suggest Ladies’ Home Journal? We are a literary magazine’” (156). The above statement, received by American Pulitzer Prize winner Sharon…
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Harrington-Lueker, Donna. Books for Idle Hours: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the Rise of Summer Reading.
While we may sometimes remember particular “beach reads” and other vacation reading we bring with us, most of the light reading that dominates the myriad summer reading lists isn’t meant…
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Sheila Liming. What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books.
The 2,700-plus books at the Mount, Edith Wharton’s historic Berkshire estate, represent only a portion of the novelist’s remarkable collection. Another 2,500 volumes, which one of Wharton’s heirs stored in…