If the letter is an ideal lens through which to view late-nineteenth-century American society as it underwent radical change, Henry Adams is an ideal correspondent. Joanne Jacobson shows how Adams used letters to broker authority, to construct alliances with correspondents, and to negotiate issues of authorship and audience. She demonstrates the rhetorical complexity of the letter and underscores its role in the struggle over cultural authority which shaped much of late-nineteenth-century American literature.
Authority and Alliance takes the reader through the evolving stages of...