The republic in print
Subtitle: print culture in the age of U.S. nation building, 1770-1870
By: Trish Loughran
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 537
ISBN-13: 9780231139083; 9780231511230
Subjects: Publishers and publishing -- United States -- History -- 18th century; Publishers and publishing -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Press and politics -- United States -- History -- 18th century; Press and politics -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Press -- United States -- History -- 18th century; Press -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Book industries and trade -- United States -- History -- 18th century; Book industries and trade -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Books and reading -- United States -- History -- 18th century; Books and reading -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Description: "Combining a materialist history of American nation building with an intellectual history of American federalism, Loughran challenges the idea that print culture created a sense of national connection among different parts of the early American union and instead reveals the early republic as a series of local and regional reading publics with distinct political and geographical identities." "Focusing on the years between 1770 and 1870, Loughran develops two arguments. First, she suggests that it was the relative lack of a national infrastructure (rather than the existence of a tightly connected print network) that actually enabled the nation to be imagined in 1776 and ratification to be secured in 1787-88. She then describes how the increasingly connected book market of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s unexpectedly exposed cracks in the evolving nation, especially in regards to slavery, exacerbating regional differences in ways that ultimately contributed to secession and civil war."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [447]-514) and index