The University of North Carolina Press

A History of the Book in America

Volume 3: The Industrial Book, 1840-1880

Edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship

2008 St. Louis Mercantile Library Prize in Bibliography

Volume 3 of A History of the Book in America narrates the emergence of a national book trade in the nineteenth century, as changes in manufacturing, distribution, and publishing conditioned, and were conditioned by, the evolving practices of authors and readers. Chapters trace the ascent of the “industrial book”--a manufactured product arising from the gradual adoption of new printing, binding, and illustration technologies and encompassing the profusion of nineteenth-century printed materials--which relied on nationwide networks of financing, transportation, and communication. In tandem with increasing educational opportunities and rising literacy rates, the industrial book encouraged new sites of reading; gave voice to diverse communities of interest through periodicals, broadsides, pamphlets, and other printed forms; and played a vital role in the development of American culture.

Contributors:

Susan Belasco, University of Nebraska

Candy Gunther Brown, Indiana University

Kenneth E. Carpenter, Newton Center, Massachusetts

Scott E. Casper, University of Nevada, Reno

Jeannine Marie DeLombard, University of Toronto

Ann Fabian, Rutgers University

Jeffrey D. Groves, Harvey Mudd College

Paul C. Gutjahr, Indiana University

David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School

David M. Henkin, University of California, Berkeley

Bruce Laurie, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Eric Lupfer, Humanities Texas

Meredith L. McGill, Rutgers University

John Nerone, University of Illinois

Stephen W. Nissenbaum, University of Massachusetts

Lloyd Pratt, Michigan State University

Barbara Sicherman, Trinity College

Louise Stevenson, Franklin & Marshall College

Amy M. Thomas, Montana State University

Tamara Plakins Thornton, State University of New York, Buffalo

Susan S. Williams, Ohio State University

Michael Winship, University of Texas at Austin

About the Author

Scott E. Casper is associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno, and author of Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. Jeffrey D. Groves is professor of literature at Harvey Mudd College and coeditor, with Scott Casper and Joanne D. Chaison, of Perspectives on American Book History: Artifacts and Commentary. Stephen W. Nissenbaum is professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts and author of The Battle for Christmas, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Michael Winship is Howard Regents Professor of English II at the University of Texas at Austin and author of American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields.