Susan M. Ryan explores antebellum Americans' preoccupation with the language and practice of benevolence. Drawing upon a variety of cultural and literary texts, she traces how people working and writing within social reform movements - and their outspoken opponents - helped solidify racial and class ideologies that ultimately marginalized even the most deserving poor. The links between race and the relations of benevolence occasioned much soul-searching among antebellum Americans, Ryan explains. In a period of heated public debate over issues such as slavery, Indian removal, and...

Susan M. Ryan explores antebellum Americans' preoccupation with the language and practice of benevolence. Drawing on a variety of cultural and literary texts, she traces how people working and writing within social reform movements and their outspoken opponents helped solidify racial and class ideologies that ultimately marginalized even the most "deserving" poor. "The links between race and the relations of benevolence occasioned much soul-searching among antebellum Americans," Ryan explains. "In a period of heated public debate over issues such as slavery, Indian removal, and non-Protestant...

The Moral Economies of American Authorship argues that the moral character of authors became a kind of literary property within mid-nineteenth-century America's expanding print marketplace, shaping the construction, promotion, and reception of texts as well as of literary reputations. Using a wide range of printed materials--prefaces, dedications, and other paratexts as well as book reviews, advertisements, and editorials that appeared in the era's magazines and newspapers--The Moral Economies of American Authorship recovers and analyzes the circulation of authors' moral...