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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Walsh, Megan (Professor), author.

Title The portrait and the book : illustration & literary culture in early America / Megan Walsh.

Publication Info. Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, [2017]
[Place of publication not identified] : Chicago Distribution Center (CDC Presses)
©2017

Item Status

Description 1 online resource
data file
Physical Medium polychrome
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents Introduction -- Benjamin Franklin's portraits and colonial printing -- Phillis Wheatley and the durability of the author portrait -- Nationalist portraiture, magazines, and political books -- Picturing the seduction heroine in the United States -- Gothic portraiture in Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland and Ormond.
Summary In the nineteenth century, new image-making methods like steel engraving and lithography caused a surge in the publication of illustrated books in the United States. Yet even before the widespread use of these technologies, Americans had already established the illustrated book format as central to the nation's literary culture. In The Portrait and the Book, Megan Walsh argues that colonial-era author portraits, such as Benjamin Franklin's and Phillis Wheatley's frontispieces; political portraits that circulated during the debates over the Constitution, such as those of the Founders by Charles Willson Peale; and portraits of beloved fictional characters in the 1790s, such as those of Samuel Richardson's heroine Pamela, shaped readers' conceptions of American literature. Illustrations played a key role in American literary culture despite the fact there was little demand for books by American writers. Indeed, most of the illustrated books bought, sold, and shared by Americans were either imported British works or reprinted versions of those imported editions. As a result, in addition to embellishing books, illustrations provided readers with crucial information about the country's status as a former colony. Through an examination of readers' portrait-collecting habits, writers' employment of ekphrasis, printers' efforts to secure American-made illustrations for periodicals, and engravers' reproductions of British book illustrations, Walsh uncovers in late eighteenth-century America a dynamic but forgotten visual culture that was inextricably tied to the printing industry and to the early US literary imagination.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Illustrated books -- History -- 17th century.
Illustrated books.
History.
Chronological Term 17th century
Subject Illustrated books -- History -- 18th century.
Chronological Term 18th century
Subject Portraits, Colonial.
Printing -- United States -- History -- 17th century.
Portraits, Colonial.
Printing -- United States -- History -- 18th century.
Printing.
ART -- Subjects & Themes -- General.
United States.
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES -- Publishing.
Chronological Term 1600-1799
Genre/Form History.
Other Form: Print version: 1609385020 9781609385026 (OCoLC)960709183
ISBN 9781609385033 (electronic book)
1609385039 (electronic book)
9781609385026
1609385020