Description
Book SynopsisIn so doing, Machor takes us ever closer to understanding the particular and varying reading strategies of historical audiences and how they impacted authors' conceptions of their own readership.
Trade Review"An important book that fills significant gaps in literary and historical scholarship on the reading, reception, publishing, and interpretation of antebellum fiction." (Barbara Hochman, Ben Gurion University)"
Table of ContentsPreface
Part I: Reading Reading Historically
1. Historical Hermeneutics, Reception Theory, and the Social Conditions of Reading in Antebellum America
2. Interpretive Strategies and Informed Reading in the Antebellum Public Sphere
Part II: Contextual Receptions, Reading Experiences, and Patterns of Response: Four Case Studies
3. "These Days of Double Dealing": Informed Response, Reader Appropriation, and the Tales of Poe
4. Multiple Audiences and Melville's Fiction: Receptions, Recoveries, and Regressions
5. Response as (Re)Construction: The Reception of Catharine Sedgwick's Novels
6. Mercurial Readings: The Making and Unmaking of Caroline Chesebro'
Conclusion: American Literary History and the Historical Study of Interpretive Practices
Notes
Index
