Social stories
Subtitle: the magazine novel in nineteenth-century America
By: Patricia Okker.
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 202
Subjects: American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Serialized fiction -- United States -- History and criticism.; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Literature publishing -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Serial publication of books -- History -- 19th century.; American periodicals -- History -- 19th century.
Description: "Social Stories offers a narrative of the American magazine novel that emphasizes its direct engagement with social, political, and cultural issues of its day. Rejecting the association of novel reading with notions of the private, Okker convincingly argues that nineteenth-century magazine novels were indeed fiercely social.

Created collaboratively between readers, editors, and authors, and read together with a community of readers and other texts, the serial novel of the 1800s proved to be an ideal form for exploring the strategies Americans used and the obstacles they faced in forming and sustaining a collective sense of themselves. They are, in short, novels that tell stories about how - and whether - individuals can come together to form a society."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-195) and index.
Table of contents: title: E pluribus unum; title: Social stories; title: Jeremy Belknap's serializing the nation; title: Fashion and the magazine novelist : the case of Ann Stephens; title: William Gilmore Simms, Martin R. Delany, and serial/sectional politics; title: After the war : national audiences, national questions; title: William Dean Howells's "modern" magazine novel.