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Publications

Unless otherwise indicated, all Institute books are published and distributed by The University of North Carolina Press. For ordering information, call 1-800-848-6224 or fax 1-800-272-6817. Please note that these books can be only purchased through UNC Press and not through the Institute.

Catherine O’Donnell Kaplan

Cloth ISBN 978-0-8078-3164-9 $59.95
Paper ISBN 978-0-8078-5853-0 $24.95

Copyright 2008 by The University of North Carolina Press

Visit the University of North Carolina Press web page for this book.

“Catherine O’Donnell Kaplan brings into focus the social and literary worlds of the American Republic’s first generation of intellectuals. Her lively portraits of Elihu Hubbard Smith, Joseph Dennie, and the Boston Anthologists depict how their elite cultural aspirations at once complemented and conflicted with their varied commitments to the public good. Anyone interested in the birth of American national literature should read (and enjoy) this excellent book.”

“Briskly readable, well researched, and informative, Men of Letters gives us a fresh and vivid story of the emergence of a literary public in early national America.”

“Kaplan captures the essence of what it meant to write imaginative works in the first decades of the new nation, and this accomplishment leads to another. Men of Letters brings alive the story of those men and women who first used poetry, fiction, drama, polite conversation, and song to test priorities in the American experiment of democratic living.”

“Kaplan has discovered the moment when capital-C Culture was invented in the United States and its original structural form. This book will become a standard work in the cultural history of the new Republic and a classic on the origins of the American intellectual class.”