Figuring Authorship in Antebellum America

“This excellent meditation on the emerging rhetoric of authorship is marked by originality, wit, and lucidity. It delivers what it promises from the beginning: a new perspective on authorial history. Newbury not only shows how this history has been neglected, but also how significant his rhetorical approach is to examining the figuration of authorship in nineteenth-century culture. It should be widely read by students of American literature, American Studies, and narrative theory, among others.”—Dale M. Bauer,University of Wisconsin, Madison

Through studies of such writers as Hawthorne, Melville, and Stowe, this book shows how the increased demand for salable entertainment fostered a new consciousness of authorship as a commercial and professional mode of work in the first half of the nineteenth century in America.