Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates in America, 18601900: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates in America, ... Studies in Publishing and Printing History)
Cambridge University Press, 12/5/1996
EAN 9780521497107, ISBN10: 0521497108
Hardcover, 298 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Conventional literary history has virtually ignored the role of newspaper syndicates in publishing some of the most famous nineteenth-century writers. Stephen Crane, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain were among those who offered their early fiction to 'Syndicates', firms which subsequently sold the work to newspapers across America for simultaneous, first-time publication. This newly decentralised process profoundly affected not only the economics of publishing, but also the relationship between authors, texts and readers. In the first full-length study of this publishing phenomenon, Charles Johanningsmeier evaluates the unique site of interaction syndicates held between readers and texts.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Newspaper syndicates of the late nineteenth century
overlooked forces in the American literary marketplace
1. Preparing the way for the syndicates
a revolution in American fiction production, distribution, and readership, 1860–1900
2. The pioneers
readyprint, plate service, and early galley-proof syndicates
3. The heyday of American fiction syndication
Irvin Bacheller, S. S. McClure and other independent syndicators
4. What literary syndicates represented to authors
saviours, doctors, or something in between?
5. What price must authors pay? The negotiations between galley-proof syndicates and authors
6. Pleasing the customers
the balance of power between syndicates and newspaper editors
7. Readers' experiences with syndicated fiction
8. The decline of the literary syndicates
Notes
Bibliography.
‘ … a seminal study for newspaper, publishing and literary history.’ Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin