The American Novel

Publishers

• rise of publishing houses, magazines, urban bookstores
• book prices fell from $2 to 25 cents
• royalties paid to authors by publishers: Harpers, Putnam, Cummins & Hilliard
• Knickerbocker Tales of Washington Irving in New York 1819
• James Fenimore Cooper wrote 32 novels, starting in 1823 with the Pioneers, the first of five Leatherstocking Tales with hero Natty Bumppo
• New England novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Herman Melville's Moby Dick 1851
• H. B. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin 1851 serial, 1852 novel, 1853 play
• poetry of Longfellow, Poe, Whitman
• illustrated dime novels from Beadle's
• illustrated magazines - Godey's
• illustrated newspapers - Leslie's 1855, Harper's 1857

Schoolbooks

• Schoolbooks of William McGuffey by Truman & Smith
• sold 122 million "Eclectic Readers" after 1836
  
• Ohio public schools led the rise of mass, standardized public education
• spelling book by Noah Webster, Connecticut lawyer and journalist and schoolteacher, written 1783, sold 15 million by 1837 and 70 million by 1890

Art

• Hudson River School of Thomas Cole (1801-48) in Catskills 1825
• "In the pure blue sky is the highest sublime... All is deep, unbroken repose up there voiceless, motionless..."
• idealized, not literal - landscape affected character - color affected emotion
• Kindred Spirits painted by Asher Durand of Cole, Cullen Bryant outdoors
• Durand was president of National Academy of Design 1850-61
• American Art Union in New York after 1838, awarded prizes, published monthly catalog, 18,000 subscribers paid $5 annual dues
• artist-exploreres Frederick Church, Albert Bierstadt
• Genre artists - ordinary activity of ordinary people
• "the idea is the essence of art" - realistic style, but idealized subjects, to uplift, reform, educate, inspire
• William S. Mount painted rural Long Island
  • "never paint for the few, but for the many"
  • The Rustic Dance won American Institute of NY prize 1830
  • Catching Crabs, Cider Making, Herald in the Country
• George C. Bingham, the Missouri artist - river scenes popular in East

Currier & Ives

• 1852 partnership - mass-produced 3 lithographic prints per week priced from $4 to 15 cents
• new steel plates replaced less durable copper lithographs
• themes of progress, technology, heroes, Protestant ethic
• rural small town life, sex roles idealized

Links:

• Godey's Ladies Book from Hope Greenberg, with sheet music
• Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture from University of Virginia
• James Fenimore Cooper
• picture from the Cooper page at U of Texas
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• picture from Peabody Essex Museum
• picture from the 1995 film from Hollywood Pictures
• Herman Melville
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• picture from the Longfellow page at Auburn
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Walt Whitman
• picture from the Library of Congress
• William McGuffey page from Univ. of Virginia
• 4 Hudson River School ../../USPics18 from the Munson Williams Proctor Institute on the Cole page of the Living Schoolbook Project at Syracuse
• Landscape, 1866 , from the Durand page of the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University
• View of the Hudson River Valley from Olana, 1867 , from the Frederic Church page of the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University
• Near Salt Lake City Utah, 1881c , from the Bierstadt page of the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University
• View additional examples of the Hudson River School at the Desmond-Fish Library online exhibit of 1000 works of art
• The "Lightning Express" Trains: "Leaving the Junction" picture from Currier & Ives online exhibit from City Museum of New York