The Preface: American Authorship in the Twentieth Century [Hardcover]

Building on insights from the fields of textual criticism, bibliography, narratology, authorship studies, and book history, The Preface: American Authorship in the Twentieth Century examines the role that prefaces played in the development of professional authorship in America. Many of the prefaces written by American writers in the twentieth century catalogue the shifting landscape of a more self-consciously professionalized trade, one fraught with tension and compromise, and influenced by evolving reading publics. With analyses of Willa Cather, Ring Lardner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Penn Warren, and Toni Morrison, Ross K. Tangedal argues that writers used prefaces as a means of expanding and complicating authority over their work and, ultimately, as a way to write about their careers. Tangedals approach offers a new way of examining American writers in the evolving literary marketplace of the twentieth century.

Introduction An Influence on the Public: Writers, Authors, Prefaces.- Chapter One People Have to Learn: Willa Cathers Introductions to My ?ntonia.- Chapter Two Stepping In or Turning Back: Ring Lardner and Authorial Refusal.- Chapter Three Inhibiting Signposts: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Authorial Anxiety.- Chapter Four The Will to Control: Ernest Hemingway and the Action of Writing.- Chapter Five The Awful Responsibility: Robert Penn Warren, Ralph Ellison, and Time.- Chapter Six A Safe Distance: Toni Morrison and the Search for Legacy.- Conclusion Every Given Moment Has Its Value: To Get a Proper Reading.

Ross K. Tangedal is Assistant Professor of English and director of the Cornerstone Press at the University of WisconsinStevens Point. He is the co-editor of Editing the Harlem Renaissance and l2