Hired Pens: Professional Writers in America’s Golden Age of Print - Softcover

Weber, Ronald

9780821412053: Hired Pens: Professional Writers in America’s Golden Age of Print

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0821412051 ISBN 13: 9780821412053

Publisher: Ohio University Press, 1997

Hired Pens tells the story of the class of full-time independent professional writers who emerged in America in the 1830s and '40s and flourished during the great age of print that began after the Civil War and continued into the 1960s. While most accounts of the writing life focus on high-culture artists, Hired Pens treats authors who pursued the shifting popular tastes of Grub Street. Likewise it treats a literary marketplace that includes not only novels and poetry but gift annuals, story papers, general-circulation magazines, dime novels, pulp and slick magazines, newspaper syndicates, and paperback originals.

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Review:

"Those interested in the crazy business of writing will find "Hired Pens" an illuminating addition to their library."
-- "The New York Times Book Review"

"Weber is a meticulous scholar. He tells the story of professional writing in America with hundreds of details."
-- "The Columbus Dispatch"

"Previous authors have covered the ground he walks in this new book, but no one has covered it better. ... Weber is a masterful writer, but he also relies heavily on the autobiographical writings of the subjects he has chosen; that reliance is not misplaced because the passages he cites are so pertinent and illuminating."
-- "Publishers Weekly"

Synopsis:

A history of professional writing in America begins in the 1830s, when the print medium became a mass medium, highlighting such writers-for-hire as Jack London who have had a lasting impact on American culture. Simultaneous. UP.

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