American Authorship and New York Publishing History, 1827-1842: The Market Experience of Catharine Maria Sedgwick and William Cullen Bryant

This study aims to understand the authorial condition in New York in the 1830's by examining the market experience of two authors whose work was defining the emergent national literature and the developing profession of authorship. During the transition from federalist to romantic expression and in the explosive growth of commerce, New York was the center of publishing authority and opportunity. While authors were encouraged by the development of literary markets and the burgeoning popular and literary press, they suffered from the stresses of practical promotion and intensifying competition in an unstable market. The market was not simply the commercial antithesis of the artistic imaginative work an author is assumed to concentrate on in writing, but one of complex opportunities, challenges, and fluctuations in author-publisher-audience conditions, relations, and response over the course of a career. These complexities are illustrated in both the content and physical form of successive works. Catharine Maria Sedgwick, the period's most successful female novelist, is compared with William Cullen Bryant, a successful male poet, journalist, and cultural spokesman, to define the as yet unempowered class of authors as one for which questions of gender contribute to but cannot alone define the professional experience. These authors were both deeply involved in the cultural life of the city. Sedgwick grappled with market demands to forge a place for her writing while also struggling to maintain her deeply ingrained family role. Bryant's artistic and family feelings were also intensified as he became more successful and more demands were made upon him. As they resisted or accommodated themselves to market challenges to the practice of their art, even "success" meant an ambivalent response in which pleasure mixed with disillusion and stress. Their work, rather than being adversely affected (in comparison with New England literature) by its commercial context, exhibits a romantic intensity that is in part a reaction to the New York professional experience. These writers illustrate the depth and intensity of authorial response in a developing and complex market.