Financing America's First Literary Boom.

Franklin traces the origins of commercial fiction publishing in the United States, preceding the arrival of James Fenimore Cooper on the literary scene. He reviews a fifty-year period in which the fiction or the business models were flawed. Cooper's model was fresh and American: historical fiction centered on contemporary issues of national concern. His work was also in dialogue with Sir Walter Scott's novels, although not always in a friendly way. Cooper managed his early career to he able to recoup his fortune, while also creating the career of the American author by responding to the market for popular American tales.