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The portrait and the book : Illustration and Literary Culture in Early America / Megan Walsh

Catalog Data

Author:
Walsh, Megan (Professor)  Search this
Physical description:
viii, 259 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Type:
Books
History
Place:
United States
Date:
2017
18th century
19th century
Contents:
Benjamin Franklin's portraits and colonial printing -- Phillis Wheatley and the durability of the author portrait -- Nationalist portraiture, magazines, and political books -- Picturing the seduction heroine in the U.S -- Gothic portraiture in Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland and Ormond
Summary:
Even before the widespread use of steel engraving and lithography in the nineteenth century, Americans had already established the illustrated book format as central to the nation's literary culture. In The Portrait and the Book, Megan Walsh argues that colonial-era author portraits, such as Benjamin Franklin's and Phillis Wheatley's frontispieces; political portraits that circulated during the debates over the Constitution, such as those of the Founders by Charles Willson Peale; and portraits of beloved fictional characters in the 1790s, such as those of Samuel Richardson's heroine Pamela, shaped readers' conceptions of American literature. Through an examination of readers' portrait-collecting habits, writers' employment of ekphrasis, printers' efforts to secure American-made illustrations for periodicals, and engravers' reproductions of British book illustrations, Walsh uncovers in late eighteenth-century America a dynamic but forgotten visual culture that was inextricably tied to the printing industry and to the early US literary imagination. -- from back cover.
Topic:
Illustration of books  Search this
Portraits, American  Search this
American literature--Illustrations  Search this
Printing--History  Search this
Illustrated books--History  Search this
Data Source:
Smithsonian Libraries
EDAN-URL:
edanmdm:siris_sil_1089876