Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: On the Idea of Cultures of Letters 1: Sparing the Rod: Discipline and Fiction in Antebellum America 2: Veiled Ladies: Toward a History of Antebellum Entertainment 3: Starting Out in the 1860s: Alcott, Authorship, and the Postbellum Literary Field 4: The Reading of Regions For a History of Literary Access The Reading of Regions: A Study in the Social Life of Forms 5: Jewett, Regionalism, and Writing as Women's Work 6: "Why Could Not a Colored Man?": Chesnutt and the Transaction of Authorship Notes Index