JOURNAL ARTICLE

Satire vs Sentiment: Mark Twain, Bella Z. Spencer, and the Subscription Book Market.

  • Published In: ELH, 2024, v. 91, n. 3. P. 783 1 of 3

  • Database: Academic Search Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Jordan, Jessica Camille 3 of 3

Abstract

This essay argues that Mark Twain has been overrepresented in scholarship on subscription bookselling, resulting in a corresponding failure to account for fiction's relationship to this popular nineteenth-century practice. Though Twain's The Gilded Age (1873) is often described as the first novel sold by subscription, I recover an earlier example: Tried and True (1866), a Civil War romance by Bella Zilfa Spencer. Reading the novel's mode of distribution as integral to its treatment of gender, race, and geography, I demonstrate the potential for literary study which gets lost somewhere between subscription bookselling's bad reputation and Mark Twain's good one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additional Information

  • Source:ELH. 2024/09, Vol. 91, Issue 3, p783
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:History
  • Publication Date:2024
  • ISSN:0013-8304
  • DOI:10.1353/elh.2024.a936613
  • Accession Number:179576508
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