Explores American colonial print cultures diverse output and how these texts shaped public life and modernity.
In The Novel and the Blank, Matthew P. Brown uncovers the vibrant, overlooked world of the eighteenth-century British American print shop. Printing more than just novels and pamphlets, these workshops produced a kaleidoscope of printed materials—from legal blanks and almanacs to runaway slave ads and chapbooks—that reflected the complexities of colonial life.
Brown paints a rich cultural history of the time, identifying and describing the steady sellers that stabilized the trade and the print surges ignited by religious revivals of the 1730s-1740s and political upheavals of the revolutionary era. He explores the connections among commercial caution, literary expression, and oppressive structures like the slave trade. The book advances our knowledge of early modern culture in several ways: by providing a rounded portrait of colonial and early national literary culture; by examining a steadily popular canon rarely read by modern scholars; and by depicting the lived religion of readers, writers, and printers who participated in this literary culture.
With a sharp focus on everyday texts and readers—rather than on the canon of works constructed by modern scholars—Brown reimagines the public sphere of the eighteenth century as a vivifying experience. Through an innovative blend of historical rigor and cultural insight, The Novel and the Blank reveals how ordinary print shaped extraordinary shifts in religion, secularism, and the ways we understand modernity itself.
extraordinary shifts in religion, secularism, and the ways we understand modernity itself.
Matthew P. Brown is an associate professor in the Center for the Book and the Department of English at the University of Iowa.
Acknowledgements Preface: The Short Eighteenth Century Introduction: Publication Culture and Literary Value 1. Franklins Beat 2. Publishing Evangelicalism 3. Bells Liberties 4. Known Unknowns 5. British American Judas Notes Index
Explores American colonial print cultures diverse output and how these texts shaped public life and modernity.
The Novel and the Blank is remarkable in its breadth and is rich with insights on the literary history of the book trades in eighteenth century British America. Benjamin Franklin, African Americans, and evangelicals serve as witnesses from a past moment. Brilliantly original, Brown shows us not only what British Americans read but also why and how it matters.
—Mary Kelley, University of Michigan
Deeply learned and delightfully witty and playful, The Novel and the Blank is literary history that is at once extremely literary, resolutely material, and deeply historical. In other words, very satisfying on any number of registers.
—David Waldstreicher, author of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poets Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence
Leaving aside tired debates about the public sphere, Matthew Brown proposes the wonderful new framework of publication culture to understand colonial American printing and writing in what he calls, exuberantly, the short eighteenth century. With a vast archive, a sharp wit, and brilliant close readings of countless printed objects, The Novel and the Blank confirms that Brown has a literary sensibility unmatched among book historians.
—Joseph Rezek, Boston University
With The Novel and the Blank, Matthew P. Brown builds on foundational work by Hall and Amory to elevate the study of early American print culture. Brown helpfully illuminates the evangelical roots of the revolutionary public sphere in this richly textured history spanning from Benjamin Franklin to popular fiction.
—Sandra M. Gustafson, University of Notre Dame
