The Social Construction of Thomas Carlyle's New England Reputation, 1834-36.

Literary historians often have recourse to dramatic metaphors in describing the spread of Romanticism in antebellum America. This paper looks behind the rhetoric to examine the hard facts of canonization in the 1830s. Taking Thomas Carlyle as an example, the paper argues that Carlyle's fame was established through the intensive dissemination of a limited number of texts in a tightly-woven social environment; high-volume sales and extensive advertising campaigns were less important than the spread of texts, news, and rumor between friends.