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oapen-20.500.12657-620512024-03-27T14:14:44Z Novels, Readers, and Reviewers Baym, Nina Literature: history and criticism History of the Americas thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBF Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 This book describes and characterizes responses of American readers to fiction in the generation before the Civil War. It is based on close examination of the reviews of all novels—both American and European—that appeared in major American periodicals during the years 1840–1860, a period in which magazines, novels, and novel reviews all proliferated. Nina Baym makes uses of the reviews to gain information about the formal, aesthetic, and moral expectations of reviewers. Her major conclusion is that the accepted view about the American novel before the Civil War—the view that the atmosphere in America was hostile to fiction—is a myth. There is compelling evidence, she shows, for the existence of a veritable novel industry and, concomitantly, a vast audience for fiction in the 1840s and 1850s. 2023-03-29T15:49:23Z 2023-03-29T15:49:23Z 1987 book ONIX_20230329_9781501726187_37 9781501726187 9780801417092 9781501727764 9781501726194 9780801494666 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/62051 eng application/pdf application/epub+zip Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International 9781501726187.pdf 9781501726194.epub Cornell University Press Cornell University Press 10.7298/6mhf-yw51 10.7298/6mhf-yw51 06a447d4-1d09-460f-8b1d-3b4b09d64407 0314e571-4102-4526-b014-3ed8f2d6750a 9781501726187 9780801417092 9781501727764 9781501726194 9780801494666 Cornell University Press 288 Ithaca [...] Open Book Program National Endowment for the Humanities NEH open access
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This book describes and characterizes responses of American readers to fiction in the generation before the Civil War. It is based on close examination of the reviews of all novels—both American and European—that appeared in major American periodicals during the years 1840–1860, a period in which magazines, novels, and novel reviews all proliferated. Nina Baym makes uses of the reviews to gain information about the formal, aesthetic, and moral expectations of reviewers. Her major conclusion is that the accepted view about the American novel before the Civil War—the view that the atmosphere in America was hostile to fiction—is a myth. There is compelling evidence, she shows, for the existence of a veritable novel industry and, concomitantly, a vast audience for fiction in the 1840s and 1850s.
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