Figures of Speech: American Writers and the Literary Marketplace, from Benjamin Franklin to Emily Dickinson

Examines a phase in the history of the relationship between writers & the literary marketplace. Looks at 5 Americans -- Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, & Emily Dickinson -- for whom writing was the primary vocation. They wrote for people whose overriding interest was commerce & economic development, but this same audience insisted that what counted as Culture had to be spiritual. Shows how the writers had to come to terms with the tension between their own ambitions & their efforts to produce a portrait of the artist as someone for whom money & fame didn t count. Illustrations.