The Profession of Authorship in America, 1800-1870: The Papers of William Charvat byMatthew J. BruccoliReview by: Paul S. BoyerThe American Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 5 (Jun., 1969), pp. 1717-1719Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1841453 .

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Americas 17I7

an analysis of documentary source materials. The opening chapter on Cornwall and its miners is an exception to this statement, but it is a disappointingly thin analysis of the causes of migration to America and of the society and culture from which the miners came.

Each of the six succeeding chapters focuses upon a single state or region where Cornishmen participated extensively in mining operations: Wisconsin, the Michigan peninsula, Colorado, California, the Pacific Northwest, and Nevada. A seventh and last one deals generally with copper mining in Utah, Montana, and Arizona. Each chapter covers the entire time span of Cornish settlement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which results in much repetition. That none has a summary indicates how little the writer is concerned with interpretation. He is content, rather, to recount the unusual deeds of well-remembered Cornishmen at work, play, or prayer, without much reference to the relationship of those deeds to the evolution of settled societies. Hyperbole abounds. On a single page of the preface Todd speaks of "virtues which amounted to the heroic," and declares that "no mine was ever without its Cornish captains," nor "any Cornish- man ever without a job." An occasional, interesting metaphor, as the one about underground miners who worked "at the turning of the earth's axis," loses its usefulness amidst the flowering of poor ones.

Here, then, is no "history" in the usual sense of the term, no analytical study of group life or social change. Few passages deal more than casually with the questions that have interested historians of immigration during the past forty years: the relative importance of the "push" and the "pull" factors; the differing rates of occupational, cultural, and social accommodation to new environments; the nature and role of ethnic organizations; alterations in the pattern of family life; and the ideological and political development of group consciousness. One long section highlights without interpretive comment the careers of a score or more of Cornish Methodist preachers in America, while another notes obscurely that the entire group, being Methodist, tended toward both social radicalism and political conservatism. Todd makes no effort, however, to analyze the relation of either pastors or laymen to the Methodist Episcopal or the smaller Methodist sects with whom they cast their lot in America.

The sources upon which the book is based are surprisingly sparse. Time and again the footnotes refer to information supplied by acquaintances made by the author while on his American trip. He also used county histories far more than either contemporary magazines or newspapers and only occasionally stumbled on caches of manuscript letters or diaries. Oddly enough, he refers to three Cornish journals that "regularly published important letters" from America, but he cites none of these letters in the book. Johns Hopkins University TIMOTHY L. SMITH

THE PROFESSION OF AUTHORSHIP IN AMERICA, I800oI870: THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM CHARVAT. Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. Foreword by Howard Mumford Jones. ([Columbus:] Ohio State University Press. I968. PP. xviii, 327. $7.oo.)

WILLIAM Charvat, professor of English at Ohio State University from I944

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I7I8 Reviews of Books

until his death in I966, believed that literary history, rightly understood, meant a close analysis of the complex interaction of author, publisher, and contemporary reading public. "Literary historians have failed, on the whole," he contended, "to recognize the fact that literature is, from one point of view, a form of business enterprise." The present work, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, represents Char- vat's uncompleted effort to rectify that failure.

In the nine previously published articles reprinted here, Charvat examines the emergence in the I 820'S of Irving and Cooper as America's first successful literary entrepreneurs; the promotional methods of the publisher James T. Fields; the role of the literary magazine in the I840's and i850's (with particular reference to Poe); specific financial details of Longfellow's and Melville's careers; and the intricacies of ante bellum book publishing, distribution, and reviewing. The hitherto unpublished portions of the work, garnered from Charvat's files, consist primarily of extended discussions of Longfellow and Melville. Long- fellow's Hyperion (I839) iS presented both as the "spiritual autobiography" of a man in the process of becoming a professional writer and as a campaign document aimed at raising the status of the literary profession in America. In the Melville essay, Charvat traces the author's efforts, from Typee to Pierre, to explore the religious and philosophical questions that beset him, without in the process alienating a reading public that had early pigeonholed him as a writer of exotic travelogues. (Charvat in passing makes the perceptive point that the "identity" difficulties of the mid-nineteenth-century American author stemmed in part from the fact that he was expected to please an impossibly diverse range of sensibilities drawn from an as yet unstratified reading public.)

Charvat occasionally insists too strenuously on the exclusive validity of his vision of literary history, at one point ridiculing those who seek to discover universal themes or contemporary relevance in an author, rather than viewing him within his own cultural matrix. There are, in fact, significant aspects of literary history that are not particularly illuminated by Charvat's approach. Considerations of the market place do little to illumine the origins of such a book as Melville's The Confidence Man, the dark outpourings of Clemens' final period, or, as Charvat acknowledges, the work of intensely private writers like Emily Dickinson. Nevertheless, as Howard Mumford Jones notes in an apprecia- tive foreword, Charvat has reminded us of an important and sometimes over- looked aspect of literary history.

It must be added, however, that, taken as a whole, this book is a disappoint- ment. The previously unpublished portions, which make up more than half of the work, are undocumented, repetitious, and rough in style. Judgment of the book ultimately depends upon the position one takes on a broader question: what is the obligation of the scholarly community with respect to the un- published work of a deceased colleague? One recalls, from the autobiography of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., that he advised Edward Channing's widow against publication of the final volume of her late husband's history, judging that it would neither enhance his reputation nor contribute significantly to historical knowledge. We are not informed if Charvat himself ever expressed specific wishes respecting the material here offered to the public, but Bruccoli does note that Charvat once observed to him that recent scholarship had largely

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Americas 1719

rendered his own unpublished studies supererogatory. Certainly it is desirable that the fruits of research be preserved in appropriate repositories for the benefit of future scholars, but on the matter of posthumous publication serious attention should be paid to the judgment of the individual in question. In this instance Charvat's instincts were sound. University of Massachusetts, Amherst PAUL S. BOYER

THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC, I80I-I815. By Marshall Smelser. [The New American Nation Series.] (New York: Harper and Row. I968. Pp. Xiv, 369. $7-95-)

THIs book accomplishes the author's purpose: "to organize the abundant learn- ing of the writers and editors who have written so many specialized studies and perfected so many documents of the history of the United States from i8oi to I8I5." Especially strong in diplomatic and military history, the fields of Smelser's previous works, it is the best one-volume synthesis of the scholarship of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, and, consequently, an effective antidote to Henry Adams.

Smelser's major interpretations are suggested by listing those scholars who have had the greatest impact on him and whose work he generously acknowl- edges: Bradford Perkins, George Dangerfield, and Arthur P. Whitaker on foreign policy; Thomas P. Abernethy on Burr ("this out-of-time renaissance princeling"); Leonard D. White on administrative history; Irving Brant on Madison; David H. Fischer on the Federalists. For the causes of the War of I8I2 he blends the emphasis on ideological factors of Roger Brown, Reginald Horsman, and Norman K. Risjord with his own economic analysis of a division between states "more interested in farm production for export" (prowar) and states more interested in the carrying trade (antiwar).

The author's judgments are essentially sympathetic to the Republicans. Henry Adams skewered Jefferson for his deviations from principles. Jefferson, runs Smelser's argument, was no "doctrinaire democrat" to begin with, but a "whiggish moderate" who kept his ideals on one track, his public deeds on another. Such deviations as he made were "an intelligent adaptation to un- foreseen circumstances." Within this framework Smelser is astringent toward "the blank spots on his libertarianism," namely his racism and "vigilantism," absorbing a watered-down version of Leonard Levy's "darker side." He judges that Madison was limited as a presidential and popular leader, but that he was neither a weakling nor an incompetent; he did "find his generals" and was a libertarian even in wartime. The Democratic-Republicans, on balance, "neither repudiated nor repealed their original principles."

Smelser is more successful with foreign policy than internal affairs and better with single events than long-range trends. The "New Federalists" come through strongly, thanks to Fischer's pathbreaking work. The Republicans would have been clearer had Smelser absorbed more of the integrating themes of Chilton Williamson's work on suffrage reform, Bray Hammond's on the politics of banking, and Noble Cunningham's on party practices. To portray "ideology," one must break loose from the strait jacket of Henry Adams'

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