Title: Edgar Allan Poe and the masses : the political economy of literature in antebellum America /
Authors: Whalen, Terence, 1959-
Publisher: Princeton University Press,
Year: 1999
Subjects: Poe, Edgar Allan, Contemporary America.; Poe, Edgar Allan, Authorship.; Literature Economic aspects United States History; Authorship Economic aspects United States History; Capitalism and literature United States History; Politics and literature United States History; Literature publishing United States History; Authors and readers United States History; Popular literature United States History and criticism.; Mass media United States History; Economics and literature United States History
Abstract: "Edgar Allan Poe has long been viewed as an artist who was hopelessly out of step with his time. But as Terence Whalen shows, America's most celebrated romantic outcast was in many ways the nation's most representative commercial writer. Whalen explores the antebellum literary environment in which Poe worked, an environment marked by economic conflict, political strife, and widespread foreboding over the rise of a mass audience. The book shows that the publishing industry, far from being a passive backdrop to writing, threatened to dominate all aspects of literary creation. Faced with financial hardship, Poe desperately sought to escape what he called "the magazine prison-house" and "the horrid laws of political economy." By placing Poe firmly in economic context, Whalen unfolds a new account of the relationship between literature and capitalism in an age of momentous social change."--Jacket.