Building on insights from the fields of textual criticism, bibliography, narratology, authorship studies, and book history, The Preface: American Authorship in the Twentieth Century examines the role that prefaces played in the development of professional authorship in America. Many of the prefaces written by American writers in the twentieth century catalogue the shifting landscape of a more self-consciously professionalized trade, one fraught with tension and compromise, and influenced by evolving reading publics. With analyses of Willa Cather, Ring Lardner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Penn Warren, and Toni Morrison, Ross K. Tangedal argues that writers used prefaces as a means of expanding and complicating authority over their work and, ultimately, as a way to write about their careers. Tangedal’s approach offers a new way of examining American writers in the evolving literary marketplace of the twentieth century.
Author(s): Ross K. Tangedal
Series: New Directions in Book History
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 238
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Praise for The Preface
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: An Influence on the Public
Authorial Prefaces and the Literary Marketplace in America
Henry James and Joseph Conrad
The American Reprint Market and the Authorial Preface
An Influence on the Public
Bibliography
Chapter 2: A Proper Reading: Willa Cather’s Introductions to My Ántonia
A Proper Reading: Cather as Editor in Control
The Impact of the 1926 Revisions
Something Complete and Great
Bibliography
Chapter 3: Stepping In or Turning Back: Ring Lardner and Authorial Resistance
Authorial Resistance
How to Write Short Stories (with Samples) (1924)
The Love Nest and Other Stories (1926)
Stepping In
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Inhibiting Signposts: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Authorial Anxiety
Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
The Great Gatsby (Modern Library, 1934)
Taps at Reveille (1935)
Bibliography
Chapter 5: The Will to Control: Ernest Hemingway and the Action of Writing
Kiki of Montparnasse (Kiki, 1929)
Green Hills of Africa (1935)
All Good Americans (Jerome Bahr, 1937)
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)
Controlling the Action
Bibliography
Chapter 6: A Safe Distance: Robert Penn Warren’s Introductions to All the King’s Men
Origins
“Huey”
Out of History Into History
Bibliography
Chapter 7: Ensuring Presence: Toni Morrison and the Language of Legacy
A Public Exposure of a Private Confidence
Language Must Get Out of the Way
Like a Grown-Up Writer
Assuming Power
Bibliography
Chapter 8: Coda: Any Given Moment Has Its Value
Bibliography
Index
