Description
Book SynopsisThe role of cultural elites and journalists in promoting reading as a means of self-improvement and social mobility
Trade Review"This well-researched, thoughtful book adds substantially to our understanding of middlebrow culture. It also has much to teach us about the complexities and variabilities of reading as a social practice. Beautifully written and intellectually deft, Reading Up will interest everyone engaged in the study of American literature and its relationship the larger culture." -Janice Radway, Communication Studies, Northwestern University, and author of A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste and Middle-Class Desire
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Cultivating Taste in a Mass-Market World 1 Mr. Mabie Tells What to Read 2 The Compromise of Silas Lapham 3 James for the General Reader 4 Misreading The House of Mirth 5 The Comforts of Romanticism Epilogue: Reading Up into the Twenty-first Century Appendix A: The Mabie Canon Appendix B: "Novels Descriptive of American Life" (November 1908) Notes Bibliography Index
