Scott E. Casper – författare

Nineteenth-century American authors, critics, and readers believed that biography had the power to shape individuals' characters and to help define the nation's identity. In an age predating radio and television, biography was not simply a genre of writing, says Scott Casper; it was the medium that allowed people to learn about public figures and peer into the lives of strangers. In this pioneering study, Casper examines how Americans wrote, published, and read biographies and how their conceptions of the genre changed over the course of a century. Campaign biographies, memoirs of pious women, patriotic narratives of eminent statesmen, ""mug books"" that collected the lives of ordinary midwestern farmers--all were labeled ""biography,"" however disparate their contents and the contexts of their creation, publication, and dissemination. Analyzing debates over how these diverse biographies should be written and read, Casper reveals larger disputes over the meaning of character, the definition of American history, and the place of American literary practices in a transatlantic world of letters. As much a personal experience as a literary genre, biography helped Americans imagine their own lives as well as the ones about which they wrote and read. |Nineteenth-century Americans believed that biographies influenced individual character and national identity. This book examines how Americans wrote, published, and read biographies during the 1800s, showing how their conceptions of the genre changed over time.

Volume 3 of A History of the Book in America narrates the emergence of a national book trade in the nineteenth century, as changes in manufacturing, distribution, and publishing conditioned, and were conditioned by, the evolving practices of authors and readers. Chapters trace the ascent of the ""industrial book""--a manufactured product arising from the gradual adoption of new printing, binding, and illustration technologies and encompassing the profusion of nineteenth-century printed materials--which relied on nationwide networks of financing, transportation, and communication. In tandem with increasing educational opportunities and rising literacy rates, the industrial book encouraged new sites of reading; gave voice to diverse communities of interest through periodicals, broadsides, pamphlets, and other printed forms; and played a vital role in the development of American culture.Contributors:Susan Belasco, University of NebraskaCandy Gunther Brown, Indiana UniversityKenneth E. Carpenter, Newton Center, MassachusettsScott E. Casper, University of Nevada, RenoJeannine Marie DeLombard, University of TorontoAnn Fabian, Rutgers UniversityJeffrey D. Groves, Harvey Mudd CollegePaul C. Gutjahr, Indiana UniversityDavid D. Hall, Harvard Divinity SchoolDavid M. Henkin, University of California, BerkeleyBruce Laurie, University of Massachusetts, AmherstEric Lupfer, Humanities TexasMeredith L. McGill, Rutgers UniversityJohn Nerone, University of IllinoisStephen W. Nissenbaum, University of MassachusettsLloyd Pratt, Michigan State UniversityBarbara Sicherman, Trinity CollegeLouise Stevenson, Franklin & Marshall CollegeAmy M. Thomas, Montana State UniversityTamara Plakins Thornton, State University of New York, BuffaloSusan S. Williams, Ohio State UniversityMichael Winship, University of Texas at Austin