Hailed as a pioneer achievement upon its original publi-cation and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1944, The Growth of American Thought has won appreciative reviews and earned the highest regard among historians of the national experience. With his elaboration of the complex interrelationships between the growth of American thought and the whole American social milieu, Curti creates not only an intellectual history, but a social history of American thought.

This book explores how authors profited from their writings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, contending that the most tangible benefits were social, rather than financial or aesthetic. It examines authors’ interactions with publishers; the challenges of literary sociability; the vexed construction of enduring careers; the factors that prevented most aspiring writers (particularly the less privileged) from accruing significant rewards; the rhetorical professionalisation of periodicals; and the manners in which emerging paradigms and technologies catalysed a belated transformation in how literary writing was consumed and perceived.