Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace

The first full-length study of the role of syndicates in the publishing history of nineteenth-century America.

This is the first full-length study of the role of newspaper syndicates in publishing writers such as Henry James, Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain. Charles Johanningsmeier shows how the economic practicalities of the syndicate system governed the consumption and interpretation of various literary texts.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.