- Copyright Page
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Transnational Precursors of American Realism
- American Realism and Gender
- The Feminine Origins of American Literary Realism
- Realism and the Uses of Humor
- Local Color, World-System; or, American Realism at the Periphery
- Aesthetic Slippage in Realism and Naturalism
- Realism <i>as</i> Modernism
- Native American Realism
- African American Realism
- Ghetto Realism—and Beyond
- Asian American Realism
- The Politics of US Latino Literature and American Realism
- Ethnic Caricature and the Comic Sensibility
- Racial Realism
- The Campaign for Realism in the New York Periodical Press
- Realism and the Profession of Authorship
- Realism’s American Readers, 1860–1914
- The Censorship of Realist and Naturalist Novels, Then and Now
- Science and Aesthetics in American Realism
- Realist Temporalities and the Distant Past
- Spaces of Consumption in American Literary Realism
- Dwelling in American Realism
- Realism and Medicine
- Realism and the New Woman
- Realism and the Middle-Class Balancing Act
- Realism and Poetry
- The Evolution of American Dramatic Realism
- Visual Art, Intertextuality, and Authorship in the Golden Age of Illustration
- American Realism and Photography
- Realist Literature, Painting, and Immediacy
- Realism and the Cinematic Gaze
- Teaching Literary Realism in Transnational America
- Teaching American Realism in Germany
- Teaching and Researching American Literature and American Realism in China
- Realism 2.0
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter examines tensions between authorship and publishing in the era of American literary realism. The publishing industry changed with the emergence of literary agents, the growing financial significance of magazines and syndication, and the increasingly influential role of publishing-house editors. All were signs of a centralizing and marketizing publishing system flexible enough to withstand changes in dominant literary genres, tastes, and fashions. With examples from the careers of well- and lesser-known realists—William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Charles Chesnutt—authorship remained stubbornly immune to professionalization, in part because writing is better considered as a craft than as a profession and in part because the practices creating authorship’s marketization did not require its professionalization.
Keywords: authorship, professionalization, realism, publishing, marketization, magazine, syndication, literary agent
Graham Thompson is Professor of American Literature at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of four books: Herman Melville: Among the Magazines; American Culture in the 1980s; The Business of America: The Literary and Critical Production of a Post-War Nation; and Male Sexuality under Surveillance: The Office in American Literature. He has published essays in American Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, the Journal of American Studies, American Periodicals, Leviathan, and American Literary Realism.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.
- Copyright Page
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Transnational Precursors of American Realism
- American Realism and Gender
- The Feminine Origins of American Literary Realism
- Realism and the Uses of Humor
- Local Color, World-System; or, American Realism at the Periphery
- Aesthetic Slippage in Realism and Naturalism
- Realism <i>as</i> Modernism
- Native American Realism
- African American Realism
- Ghetto Realism—and Beyond
- Asian American Realism
- The Politics of US Latino Literature and American Realism
- Ethnic Caricature and the Comic Sensibility
- Racial Realism
- The Campaign for Realism in the New York Periodical Press
- Realism and the Profession of Authorship
- Realism’s American Readers, 1860–1914
- The Censorship of Realist and Naturalist Novels, Then and Now
- Science and Aesthetics in American Realism
- Realist Temporalities and the Distant Past
- Spaces of Consumption in American Literary Realism
- Dwelling in American Realism
- Realism and Medicine
- Realism and the New Woman
- Realism and the Middle-Class Balancing Act
- Realism and Poetry
- The Evolution of American Dramatic Realism
- Visual Art, Intertextuality, and Authorship in the Golden Age of Illustration
- American Realism and Photography
- Realist Literature, Painting, and Immediacy
- Realism and the Cinematic Gaze
- Teaching Literary Realism in Transnational America
- Teaching American Realism in Germany
- Teaching and Researching American Literature and American Realism in China
- Realism 2.0
- Index
