Overview

Explores the sibling rivalry that emerged in the American literary marketplace in the decades after the advent of the penny press, showing how journalism became a target, a counterpoint, and even a model for numerous American authors, including Thoreau, Cooper, Poe, and Stowe.

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9780230110946

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<p> Literature and Journalism in Antebellum America is a crisp and graceful study of one of the longest playground fights among American writers--the competing claims to 'truth' by journalists and by other writers in literary work. This is 'sibling rivalry' Canada argues, because everyone who sought to live by their pen in the nineteenth century shared an encounter with news reporting as well as with belles-lettres . . . We are led directly and skillfully to what Canada has to say at the end: 'Great journalists and great authors, after all, agree on two things: stories are great, but the truth is hard.' --Tom Leonard, Professor, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley<p> Literature and Journalism in Antebellum America offers a unique perspective on a hitherto-neglected subject of importance: the chief antebellum writers' sharp awareness of and sharper responses to the rise of commercial writing in newspapers that captured so large an audience. Historians of

Literature and Journalism in Antebellum America is a crisp and graceful study of one of the longest playground fights among American writers the competing claims to truth by journalists and by other writers in literary work. This is sibling rivalry Canada argues, because everyone who sought to live by their pen in the nineteenth century shared an encounter with news reporting as well as with belles-lettres . . . We are led directly and skillfully to what Canada has to say at the end: Great journalists and great authors, after all, agree on two things: stories are great, but the truth is hard. Tom Leonard, Professor, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley Literature and Journalism in Antebellum America offers a unique perspective on a hitherto-neglected subject of importance: the chief antebellum writers' sharp awareness of and sharper responses to the rise of commercial writing in newspapers that captured so large an audience. Historians of American literature, print culture, and American Studies will be particularly interested in this book, but it should be found on the shelves of anyone interested in nineteenth-century America generally. Moreover, the author's asides that treat of the vexed state of journalism at this moment add to the volume's significance. --Philip F. Gura, Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Author Information

MARK CANADA Professor and Chair of the Department of English and Theatre at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, USA

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