Title: Edgar Allan Poe and the masses
First published: 1999
Description: 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.
Subjects: Authors and readers, Authorship, Capitalism and literature, Economic aspects, Economic aspects of Authorship, Economics and literature, History, History and criticism, Literature publishing, Politics and literature, Popular literature, Poe, edgar allan, 1809-1849, Popular literature, history and criticism, Mass media, united states, history, Mass media, Contemporary America, Literature
Places: United States
People: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PS2633 .W48 1999