{"product_id":"america-the-middlebrow-jaime-harker-9781558495975","title":"America the Middlebrow: Women's Novels, Progressivism, and Middlebrow Authorship Between the Wars","description":"\u003cp\u003eBetween the two world wars, American publishing entered a \"golden age\" characterized by an explosion of new publishers, authors, audiences, distribution strategies, and marketing techniques. The period was distinguished by a diverse literary culture, ranging from modern cultural rebels to working-class laborers, political radicals, and progressive housewives. In \u003ci\u003eAmerica the Middlebrow\u003c\/i\u003e, Jaime Harker focuses on one neglected mode of authorship in the interwar period--women's middlebrow authorship and its intersection with progressive politics. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith the rise of middlebrow institutions and readers came the need for the creation of the new category of authorship. Harker contends that these new writers appropriated and adapted a larger tradition of women's activism and literary activity to their own needs and practices. Like sentimental women writers and readers of the 1850s, these authors saw fiction as a means of reforming and transforming society. Like their Progressive Era forebears, they replaced religious icons with nationalistic images of progress and pragmatic ideology. In the interwar period, this mode of authorship was informed by Deweyan pragmatist aesthetics, which insisted that art provided vicarious experience that could help create humane, democratic societies. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDrawing on letters from publishers, editors, agents, and authors, \u003ci\u003eAmerica the Middlebrow\u003c\/i\u003e traces four key moments in this distinctive culture of letters through the careers of Dorothy Canfield, Jessie Fauset, Pearl Buck, and Josephine Herbst. Both an exploration of a virtually invisible culture of letters and a challenge to monolithic paradigms of modernism, the book offers fresh insight into the ongoing tradition of political domestic fiction that flourished between the wars.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Jaime Harker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1558495975\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781558495975\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Massachusetts Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/20\/2007\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 192\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.63lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.93h x 6.43w x 0.56d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReference and Research Bk News\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/01\/2008 pg. 264","brand":"Jaime Harker","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49096982233343,"sku":"9781558495975","price":32.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/america-the-middlebrow-jaime-harker-9781558495975","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}