@article{455876,
      recid = {455876},
      author = {Gardner, Jared.},
      title = {The rise and fall of early American magazine culture  [electronic resource] /},
      publisher = {University of Illinois Press,},
      address = {Urbana :},
      pages = {1 online resource (xi, 203 p.) :},
      year = {2012},
      abstract = {"Between the newly canonized novels of the 1790s and the  long-familiar novels of the 1820s, early American literary  magazines figured themselves as museums, bringing together  a multitude of notable content and enabling readers to  choose what to consume. A transatlantic literary form that  refused to break with British cultural models and  genealogy, the early American magazine had at its center  the anonymous authority of the editor and a porous  distinction between reader and author. Esteemed subscribers  were treated as magnets to attract other subscribers, and  subscribers were prompted to become contributors, giving  these early American publications the appearance of public  forums. The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine  Culture reexamines these publications and their reach to  show how magazine culture was multi-vocal, as opposed to  novel culture, which imposed a one-sided authorial voice  and restricted the agency of the reader. In this first  book-length study of the history of American magazine  culture in the colonial and early national period, Jared  Gardner describes how those who invested considerable  energies in this form--including some of the period's most  important political and literary figures such as Charles  Brockden Brown and Washington Irving--sought to establish a  very different model of literary culture than what came to  define American literary history and its scholarship. He  cautions against privileging novels or authors as the  essential touchstones of American literary history and  instead encourages an understanding of how the "editorial  function" favored by magazine culture shaped reading and  writing practices. Countering assumptions about early  American print culture and challenging our scholarly  fixation on the novel, Gardner reimagines the early  American magazine as a rich literary culture that operated  as a model for nation-building by celebrating editorship  over authorship and serving as a virtual salon in which  citizens were invited to share their different  perspectives. This important work revisits largely lost  interventions in the forms and politics of literature and  sounds a vibrant call to radically revise early American  literary history."--book jacket.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/455876},
}