Sarah Wadsworth

Well-researched and jargon-free academic book about the segmentation of the literary market in nineteenth-century America. Wadsworth argues that the different niche markets that arose in American publishing were not merely strategies for selling more books. Rather, the identification of specific audiences for books led to new "communities of readers" who both shaped and were shaped by the specific genres and forms of literature that emerged during the century. Wadsworth looks at children's fiction as a separate marketplace, comparing and contrasting the production of girls' and boys' books at the time, as well as questions of class, access, popularity, and format (magazines/pulp periodicals/books).

I think our culture still dismisses genre writing as "not literary" and probably still associates particular genres with class identity or presumed lower levels of education. An interesting look back at the symbiosis between readers and genres. Some sections were more related to my interests than others.… (más)