Men of Letters in the Early Republic

by Kaplan, Catherine O'donnell

• ISBN13: 9780807831649
• ISBN10: 0807831646
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-03
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, after decades of intense upheaval and debate, the role of the citizen was seen as largely political. But as Catherine O'Donnell Kaplan reveals, some Americans saw a need for a realm of public men outside politics. They believed that neither the nation nor they themselves could achieve virtue and happiness through politics alone. Imagining a different kind of citizenship, they founded periodicals, circulated manuscripts, and conversed about poetry, art, and the nature of man. They pondered William Godwin and Edmund Burke more carefully than they did candidates for local elections and insisted other Americans should do so as well.Kaplan looks at three groups in particular: the Friendly Club in New York City, which revolved around Elihu Hubbard Smith, with collaborators such as William Dunlap and Charles Brockden Brown; the circle around Joseph Dennie, editor of two highly successful periodicals; and the Anthologists of the Boston Athenaeum. Through these groups, Kaplan demonstrates, an enduring and influential model of the man of letters emerged in the first decade of the nineteenth century.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
List of Illustrations	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Sensibility and Sociability at Work in the World	p. 13
Projects Literary and Moral: A World of Creation and Exchange	p. 42
Two Visions of Circulation: The Medical Repository and "The Institutions of the Republic of Utopia"	p. 87
He Summons Genius to His Aid: Joseph Dennie and the Farmer's Weekly Museum, 1795-1800	p. 114
Ungentle Readers: The Port Folio, 1801-1805	p. 140
These Quiet Regions: The Boston Athenaeum and the Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review, 1804-1811	p. 184
The Port Folio Remade, 1806-1812	p. 216
Conclusion	p. 231
Index	p. 235
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