Steven Fink

Prophet in the Marketplace: Thoreaus Development As a Professional W Steven Fink 1st edition

By focusing on the economic relationship between writer and reader in the USA in the antebellum period, Steven Fink not only reveals the early professional ambitions of Thoreau as conveyed in his writings, but also illuminates the nature of 19th-century publishing. The author shows Thoreau to have been, from his first publications, sensitive to questions of audience and literary markets, and traces his evolving professionalism through the various trials and errors of his career, demonstrating how these professional considerations profoundly shaped his writings. The book concentrates on Thoreau's development in the pre-"Walden" years, when he wrote moral essays, literary criticism, reform essays, nature sketches and travel narratives for a full range of literary media - from popular magazines to publications for the intellectual elite.