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Cooper's Pathfinder 1840
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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
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