Reconstructing, Reimagining: 1865–1900 223circulation in the millions. Easily the most successful author in this field was
Horatio Alger (1834–1899), the titles of whose most popular books for boys tell
their own story: Ragged Dick (1867), Luck and Pluck (1869), and Tattered Tom
(1871). It was also promulgated in the new mass circulation magazines and
newspapers. One of the most remarkable features of this period, in fact, along with
the general trans formation of the economy – and the political corruption that, very
often, went with it – was the development of publishing into a vast and multiple
industry and, along with that, the growth of a mass readership, eager to consume
that industry’s products. The spread of education and literacy, the technology of
mass production, the access to all markets opened up by the railways, all meant that
something like a uniform print culture was possible for the entire nation, and that
specialist audiences could also be catered to or even created.
So there was uniformity and diversity. There were new mass circulation
publications: not only the dime novels, celebrating cowboy or detective heroes or
telling tales of success, but “story papers” serializing mainly romance and adventure
narratives. There were school readers, like the McGuffey readers used in schools
between 1836 and 1890 that sang of the virtue of labor and humility (“Work, work,
my boy, be not afraid / ... / And blush not for your humble place”), doing their
cultural work by assimilating their young audience to the values of the dominant
culture. There was a steady stream of bestsellers, like the 45 romantic novels of Frank
R. Stockton (1834–1902) or Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ (1884) by Lew Wallace
(1827–1905), which sold over three million copies. But, on the other hand, there were
also a vast number of specialist publications, reflecting and reinforcing the existence of
many Americas, the continuing fact of cultural plurality. On one level, there were the
literary magazines, like Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Monthly, and Scribner’s Monthly,
whose relatively small circulations belied their considerable cultural influence. On
another level were the more than 1,200 foreign language periodicals in circulation by
1896, serving mostly the new immigrant groups, the over 150 publications catering to
African-Americans, and the many other magazines and newspapers circulating
among other ethnic groups on a local or larger scale.
Among those who reflected and benefited from both the uniformity and diversity
were women writers. The years following the Civil War witnessed an exponential
increase in the opportunities available for women, mostly white women but also
some others, in education and work outside the menial or domestic. In the South,
the challenge of war had required white women to take up more public roles; so did
the dearth of men when the war was over, the destruction of a generation in the
conflict. In the North and elsewhere, too, the necessities of war, which drew women
out of the home in more numbers than ever before, were followed by the demands
of the new economy. Women, and especially white women from the middle and
lower middle classes, began to enter the new business world as store assistants,
telephone and telegraph operators, and clerical workers. For black and white
working-class women, it was more a matter of bitter necessity than opportunity:
they had to work, in the fields still, or in the factories. The dominant movement,
though, was away from the hearth and home, and its accompanying ideology – forGGray_c03.indd 223ray_c 03 .indd 223 8 8/1/2011 7:54:18 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 18 AM