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Inverted Audiences: Transatlantic Readers and International Bestsellers, 1851-1891

Estes, Sharon Lynn
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376042728

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
This dissertation challenges traditional author-based chronologies of British and American literatures by examining the international readerships for nineteenth-century bestsellers. The project spans the decades between 1851, when a series of legal cases undermined the copyrights of American books in Britain, and 1891, when the Chace Act in the United States provided full international copyright protection. In this period, international copyright laws (or lack thereof), publishing practices, and circulation patterns allowed bestsellers to circulate even more widely outside their countries of national origin, a pattern I call an inverted audience. Situated at the intersection of current work in book history and transatlantic studies, this dissertation constructs a phenomenology of the bestseller that accounts for these trends in publishing and reading within an international context. I argue that tracing and analyzing the international circulation of bestsellers not only re-nationalizes particular books by focusing on readers, but also creates a newly global map of the book trade that emphasizes reciprocal influences among nations. Constructed as a series of case studies, the dissertation brings together nineteenth-century publishers’ records, book trade periodicals, reviews, and international reprint editions to form a comprehensive view of how international audiences responded to particular books’ content, context, and circumstances of publication. In Chapter 1, I examine how widespread British reprints of Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World (1851) and Queechy (1852) variously reshaped these sentimental novels and connected them with a religious readership in England. Chapter 2 compares the international circulation and reception of “The American Tennyson” and “The British Longfellow”; and shows how the popular reprint market on both sides of the Atlantic enabled readers at all levels to imagine close relationships between themselves and their favorite poets. The third chapter discusses how American reprints of East Lynne and Lady Audley’s Secret crossed lines drawn in Civil War publishing and copyright law, inflected localized marriage laws, and sparked theatrical adaptations that would come to define the succeeding decades in American repertory theater. The final chapter of this dissertation extends the map of reciprocal relationships and inverted audiences to the colonial market and book trade, examining how the Australian bestseller The Mystery of a Hansom Cab became a London sensation in 1886, subsequently dominating American reprint markets as well. This triangulated geographical reading pattern revises accounts of imperial literary identities and the emerging detective genre. In proposing the categories of readerships and bestsellers to bring attention to new ways of mapping literary chronology and national relations, this dissertation contributes to literary recovery efforts while suggesting new strategies for literary interpretation suggested by new local reading contexts. Bestsellers tell stories of a book’s transnational circulation that are simultaneously material and intellectual, and looking at the period’s most popular books provides a unique opportunity to trace currents in transatlantic reading
Clare Simmons, Ph.D. (Advisor)
Susan Williams, Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair)
Steven Fink, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Amanpal Garcha, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
295 p.
American Literature; Australian Literature; British and Irish Literature; Literature
transatlantic literature; history of reading; history of publishing; nineteenth-century literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Estes, S. L. (2013). Inverted Audiences: Transatlantic Readers and International Bestsellers, 1851-1891 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376042728

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Estes, Sharon. Inverted Audiences: Transatlantic Readers and International Bestsellers, 1851-1891 . 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376042728.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Estes, Sharon. "Inverted Audiences: Transatlantic Readers and International Bestsellers, 1851-1891 ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376042728

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1376042728
512
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.