The story of publishing was initially the story of printing.

The printing press by Gutenberg in the mid

15th century revolutionized the way people thought about literature and its accessibility. Prior to it, only the
Bible was copied by monks in monasteries. This revolution allowed greater intellectual life outside the
sacred space of the Church through the distribution of texts, leading to a greater number of people who could
read. In the 17th century and until the 18th century, the first printers in Massachusetts in America during the
colonial era were both publisher and printers at the same time. Religion played an important role in the
development of the print culture in the colonies since the Bible was read and commented by individuals in
Protestant dominations. Because of the supremacy of England over the colonies and the mercantilist system,
they could only import European books, well-kept in private libraries by the elite.
The publisher profession started to emerge at the wake of the revolution between the colonies and
the motherland with printers like Isaiah Thomas and Benjamin Franklin who printed and published in
newspapers political pamphlets. Those printers/publishers also helped to promote American language and
culture by printing Noah Webster primer. The idea was to instruct and enrich the people and develop a
distinct English, working towards independence.
From the second half of the 18th century onwards, the novel started to rise. The first novels printed
and published were pirated editions of European novels. With Mathew Carey, known as the father of modern
publishing in the United States, and his book trades, the question of “buying American” was born. Carey,
who contributed to the specialization of publishers by dissociating tasks, also rose the question of a national
American culture: "Writers tend to agree that a uniquely American literature is a prerequisite to achieving
cultural equality with England and Europe, but regularly disagree about what, exactly, makes a work or a
body of literature “American.” (Sofer, 2005, p.1). With the industrial boom and the technological
improvement of the antebellum years, the mass market started to emerge, meaning that publishers could real
further west where people had very little access to books.
This new dynamic also meant a rise in literacy and therefore an increase in the number of readers.
By 1840’s, the reading public in the United States was insatiable and the will to develop American literature
became a need, also know today as the literary concept of the Great American Novel quest. However this
need conjunctly rose the question of the essence, the identity of what it meant to be an author: “Producing an
"America of art” signaled a fundamental shift in self-conception: from "bread and butter" writer to artist
working on a “great book," unwilling to disclaim either "ambition" or "fame" as a motivating force.” (Sofer,
2005, p.2).
Ultimately, the relationship between the author and the publisher/editor is intertwined in many ways,
in both the history of the publisher and the history of authorship. However, one can wonder in which ways
the study of the author-publisher relationship conveys to debunk the myth of the solitary genius in literature?
The first part of this analysis will explore the notion of author in literature and the author as a myth of the
solitary genius whereas the second part will study a shift in paradigm with the role of the publisher within the
notion of authorship.

The question of the identity of the author is central in this problematic. According to the Oxford
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2010), an author is “a person who writes books” or “the person who creates
or starts something, especially a plan or an idea”. Here, the notion of “creation” places the actor at the center
of its creation, as a solitary genius. The author being on the central stage in literature is a concept that will

 start in the early 19th century and will last until the end of the 1960’s with French writer Roland Barthes and
his text The Death of the Author, echoing both in France and in the U.S. because of the Civil Rights
movements that took place at the time. Interestingly, the word following that definition in the dictionary is
“authoress” which is “a woman author” which implies that the role of women in writing literature is
secondary as opposed to the role of men. To follow up on this idea, it is fascinating, from a linguistics point
of view, to look at the word. “Authoress” is a combination of the word “author” and the suffix -ess. Suffixes
are a group of letters added to the root of a word, which in this context would mean that the figure of the
author is first of all a male one and that the women authors are an addition or a separate part of the male
circle of writers. Indeed, if we look at the past centuries, the feminine figure in the literary canon is not
obvious and only started to appear later as a subject of study in schools. It rises the question of the male
authority and the feminine legitimacy in literature as well as in the History. Naomi Sofer (2005) wrote about
the question of identity of being a female writer in the 19th century in the United States: “For the women
writers […] literary careers began in the late 1850s, after female authorship had become an accepted fact in
American cultural life [… ] Theirs was a generation that was limited most severely not by the narrowly
defined notions of acceptable female public speech […] These writers […] differed […] in their relationships
to the literary establishment and male intellectual authority, and in their self-conception as artists and
intellectuals” (p.2).
However being an author, whether female or male, is also related to the concept of artistic genius and
in particular to the romantic vision of the author as a solitary genius: “Romanticism had celebrated the artist
himself or herself as being at the centre of art, as if the art-work were important because of the genius which
lay behind it.” (Ayers, 2004). According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2010), a genius is “a
person who is unusually intelligent or artistic, or who has a very high level of skill, especially in one area”.
To be a writer supposes that the person did not choose this profession. It is more of a calling so the question
of reward or money is not supposed to be taken into account for the writer. In an article of the Rupkatha
Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities called All the world’s a stage and I’m a genius in it:
Creative Benefits of Writers’ Identification with the Figure of Artistic Genius (2013), Claudia Chibici-
Revneanu describes the solitary genius as such: “A lonely creator figure fights many obstacles such as
poverty and artistic rejection (among others), to be finally rewarded with a kind of secular immortality in the
form of fame.” (p.35). The romantic vision of the solitary genius, who is according to Chibici-Revneanu
(2013) “as outstandingly talented, often mysteriously inspired and mentally unstable” is depicted in a letter
Herman Melville wrote to Hawthorne in 1851: “In a week or so, I go to New York, to bury myself in a third-
story room, and work and slave on my “Whale” […] The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood
in which a man ought always to compose”. The question of the calling and the money issue is also
highlighted in this letter: “Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding
the door ajar. […] What I feel moved to write, that is banned – it will not pay”. What is underlined here is
the fact that although being an author is a calling, the writer still need to eat and therefore needs to write
popular pieces of work that will pay. However, Melville, here, is also embodying the figure of the poor,
romantic author by explaining, a little bit later in the letter, that he cannot help but write what inspires him
the most, his masterpiece: Moby Dick. Morever, in James T. Fields paper on authors (1871), Fields
underlines a romantic vision of the author Hawthorne as being dejected after being fired at his job. The
setting emphasizes the poverty of the author: it is winter, Hawthorne is sitting near a stove in a bedroom,

 depressed and explains to Fields he is “the most unpopular writer in America” and that he has no money.
Later on, Fields recollects meeting Hawthorne after this episode: “I found Hawthorne in his little red cottage
at Lenox, surrounded by his happy young family […] Next morning we were all invited by Mr. Dudley Field
[…] to ascend Monument Mountain. Holmes, Hawthorne, Duyckinck, Herman Melville, Headley, Sedgwick,
Matthews, and several ladies, were of the party. We scrambled to the top with great spirit”. This quotation
shows the romantic vision of the poor lonely genius who overrides hardships, climbs his way up the ladder to
finally ascend the pantheon of famous, successful writers, emphasized by the image of the mountain in the
quote. It should be reminded that when Fields wrote about this event that occurred years ago prior to his
book, he is describing the role of the publisher within the creation of an author’s piece of work. Fields is then
removing the mystique surrounding of the solitary genius of the writer being the center of everything by
positioning the publisher as a visionary, the almost divine intervention enabling Hawthorne to achieve
success.

As the analysis of the first part has shown, the myth of the author is build around the question of
identity of the author itself. In addition, the very concept of romanticism is a part of the vision of the writer
being a solitary genius, in which, he/she is at the center of the creation. However, this analysis also briefly
introduces the role of the publisher which debunks the myth revolving around the author being the only one
involved in the writing process. The next stage of this analysis will contribute to demonstrate a shift in
paradigm with the publisher being both an artistic and business genius.

From the mid 19th century onwards, a new kind of publishers started to emerge on the literary stage:
“The 1850s saw the emergence of a group of cultural institutions such as literary and art periodicals (Harper's
Monthly [1850], Putnam's Monthly [1851], the Atlantic Monthly [1857], the Cray-on [1855]) publishing
houses (Ticknor and Fields), and libraries (the Boston Public Library [1852]), committed to supporting
American art and literature, demarcating a realm of "high" literary production, and making a specific notion
of "culture" widely available.” (Sofer, 2005). These publishers changed the dynamic revolving around the
myth of the author, being a solitary genius. Jack Stillinger in 1991 wrote: “The relationship of multiple
authorship to literary and editorial theory ought to be of interest to anyone who cares for logic and
consistency in our thinking about literature.” (p.7). Madeleine Stern, in The Role of the Publisher in the Mid-
Nineteenth Century American Literature (1981) was exclusively focused on the role of the publisher in
literature and what it meant to be a publisher working with authors. She gives little credit to the authors and a
lot to the publishers, almost putting the publisher as the center of the creation of a book. She is writing about
the relation between the publisher and their authors evolving to a business and a personal one, the publisher
being a mentor to the author. Stern seems to have taken the notion of art in literature as the result of solitary
genius and moved the pendulum all away to the other side: “The publisher is the nerve centre of the Book
World” (p.5). Publishers are gate keepers, they assess the readers taste, they are the intermediary between the
authors, their texts and the public. The duality between art and business in a book (the piece of art and the
object in itself) is also reflected in the publisher figure: “He is at once the member of a profession and the
dealer in a commercial trade” (Stern, 1981, p.5). Indeed, both Stern and Walter Hines Page described the
publisher as pivotal in shaping, creating a national literature that did not exist before: “He may help shape

 popular taste and influence the nature of a literary work” (Stern, 1981, p.5); “To encourage a high literary
purpose […] They feel ennobled by trying to do a service to literature” (Page, 1905, p.27), promoting and
ultimately selling that work (hence the commercial side of the profession).
According to historian Susan Coultrap-McQuin (1990), Carey, who embodied the transition to
modern publishing of the United States, also inaugurated the notion of Gentlemen publishers in the first half
of the 19th century. Those publishers considered their profession as dignified, as a calling, echoing the notion
of artistic genius. They considered that publishing was a mean of promoting culture and moral first and
foremost. This self-representation is even more vivid in Page essay on publishers “To keep bookmaking as a
fine art, to keep bookselling a dignified profession” (p.25) and in Stern’s article: “He is the dispenser of
knowledge to the community” (p.5). It also exudes the values Page’s conception of an idealized relationship
with the author. To take up on some of his words, Page emphasized that publishers were there to do “a real
service to the author” (p.27) and that this service would be followed by a close friendship “We have become
good friends, you see; and we are as helpful to each other as we know how to be” (p.26). Regarding the
notion of the calling, Page strongly supported the idea that publishing is not a profitable business,
demonstrating how much a book costs and how much they were getting in return. Publishers were not in the
business for money but for the sake of art and the relationship they had with the authors. In addition, when
James T. Fields in his memoirs (1871) recollected memories about his days as a publisher, and more
specifically a meeting with Hawthorne, not only he depicted Hawthorne as a romantic solitary genius but he
also casted a light on the role of the publisher in the creative process of writing. This dimension was also
conveyed in Stern’s article The Role of the Publisher in the Mid-Nineteenth Century American Literature
(1981): “In his creation surely the publisher was as deeply involved as the author” (p.8); “Through the
publisher’s involvement, a nations literature came of age” (p.22). Fields acted as a publisher and as an editor.
The editor is really the person who will work and the text, especially with the author to try and improve it:
“At my suggestion he had altered the plan of that story […] I persuaded him, after reading the first chapters
of the story, to elaborate it, and publish it as a separate work”. There is an exchange, a collaboration and trust
between the two individuals. Fields knew that he helped construct Hawthorne’s reputation but that the
author’s success is the results of a collaboration. That last idea of collaboration in Walter Hines Page essay
(1905) when he describes all the steps that a publisher/editor has to go through in order to sell a book and
make it a success “A novel comes to the publisher […] I have to read it […] we have to correspond with the
author […] prepare it for the printer […] the machinery of publicity is put in action […]” (pp.28-30). This
long passage highlights the role of the publisher but also of all the people working on a book since Page is
citing several number of professions too. This idea of multiple authorship is well-described in Jack
Stallinger’s book Multiple Authorships and the Myth of the Solitary Genius (1991): “A work may be the
collaborative product of the nominal author and a friend, a spouse, a ghost, an agent, an editor, a translator, a
publisher, a censor, a transcriber, a printer, or—what is more often the case—several of these acting together
or in succession.” (p.6) which ultimately debunks the myth of the author as a solitary genius.

Overall, this analysis of the myth of the solitary genius in literature has demonstrated that this myth
was build around the notion of the national identity of a country and the author’s identity. The study has only
emphasized on the romantic vision of the author, leading to the myth of the solitary genius, the center of
creation that still lasts nowadays. However, digging a little deeper into the relationship between the author

and the publisher/editor of the 19th century has underlined that a book, in fact, results from a collaboration
between the author and the publisher. Following up on that idea of collaboration, in a further study, it would
be interesting to study the figure of the library agent that appears on the editorial stage towards the end of the
19th century and the early 20th century in the United States, as part of the author-publisher-editor
relationship dynamic.