7 - Cheap books and expensive magazines

Summary

Literature is at a sad discount. There is really nothing to be done in this way. Without an international copyright law, American authors may as well cut their throats. A good magazine, of the true stamp, would do wonders in the way of a general revivication of letters, or the law. We must have – both if possible.

–Poe to Frederick W. Thomas, 27 August 1842

The cost-saving muslin bindings of the early-to-mid 1830s scarcely prepared Poe for the poorly printed and paper-covered pamphlet novels which would appear at the decade's end. New steam-powered papermaking and printing techniques combined with the lack of international copyright law allowed American publishers to issue mass quantities of popular British novels or English translations of French novels for pennies a copy. Introduced in the late 1830s, pamphlet novels, which looked more like magazines than books, proliferated during the early 1840s. These cheap books profoundly influenced the American publishing industry and significantly shaped the direction of Poe's literary career.

The pamphlet novel originated in the periodical press. In 1839, Rufus Griswold and Park Benjamin began editing the mammoth weekly, Brother Jonathan. Before the year's end, they turned the paper over to its publisher, Wilson and Company. The following year Griswold and Benjamin teamed up with Jonas Winchester to begin the New World. Like Brother Jonathan, the New World was a mammoth weekly, a large-format paper with pages as wide as four feet and containing some eleven columns.