Introduction The Matter of the Text

• Published in: American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834-1853 p. 1
• Main Author: Meredith L. McGill
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc 21.08.2013
• Subjects: American literature; Arts; Business; Civil law; Communications; Communications media; Comparative literature; Copyright laws; Copyrights; Engraving; High culture; High literature; Industrial sectors; Industry; Intellectual property law; Knowledge industries; Law; Literary criticism; Literary genres; Literary history; Literary studies; Literature; Periodicals; Poetry; Print media; Printmaking; Property law; Publishing industry; Serial publications; Social sciences; Textual criticism; Textuality; Visual arts; World literature
• ISBN: 9780812219951; 0812219953

American Literature and the Culture of Reprintingis a case study of the dynamic relationship between conceptions of literary property and American cultural production, focusing on an extraordinarily vibrant period of publishing in the 1830s and ’40s, just prior to what literary critics call the “American Renaissance.” In this period, legal and political resistance to tight controls over intellectual property produced a literary marketplace suffused with unauthorized publications. Not only was the mass-market for literature in America built and sustained by the publication of cheap reprints of foreign books and periodicals, the primary vehicles for the circulation of literature were