Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace

Conventional literary history has virtually ignored the role of newspaper syndicates in publishing some of the most famous nineteenth-century writers. Stephen Crane, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain were among those who offered their early fiction to ‘Syndicates’, firms which subsequently sold the work to newspapers across America for simultaneous, first-time publication. This newly decentralised process profoundly affected not only the economics of publishing, but also the relationship between authors, texts and readers. In the first full-length study of this publishing phenomenon, Charles Johanningsmeier evaluates the unique site of interaction syndicates held between readers and texts.

• First book on the subject • Revises the traditional notion of literary history

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Newspaper syndicates of the late nineteenth century: overlooked forces in the American literary marketplace; 1. Preparing the way for the syndicates: a revolution in American fiction production, distribution, and readership, 1860–1900; 2. The pioneers: readyprint, plate service, and early galley-proof syndicates; 3. The heyday of American fiction syndication: Irvin Bacheller, S. S. McClure and other independent syndicators; 4. What literary syndicates represented to authors: saviours, doctors, or something in between?; 5. What price must authors pay? The negotiations between galley-proof syndicates and authors; 6. Pleasing the customers: the balance of power between syndicates and newspaper editors; 7. Readers’ experiences with syndicated fiction; 8. The decline of the literary syndicates; Notes; Bibliography.

‘ … a seminal study for newspaper, publishing and literary history.’ Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin