Consumerism and Prestige: The Materiality of Literature in the Modern Age

This anthology explores the relationships and interdependencies between literary production and distinctions of taste by examining how the material aspects of literary texts, such as the cover, binding, typography, and paper stock, reflect or even determine their cultural status. In the nineteenth century, for example, the industrialization of printing made possible a wide range of cheap formats, such as dime novels, pulp magazines, and paperbacks, which made literature available to a mass reading public. The increased demand for new content effectively lowered the cultural entrance level, which resulted in a tremendous expansion of popular or trivial fiction. These developments were often perceived as a threat to traditional literary institutions, which increasingly relied on material distinctions as a way of preserving their cultural authority, and some publishers even attempted to mimic the conventions of exclusivity by creating deluxe editions that were designed to preserve the privileged status of so-called ＂highbrow＂ texts. In many cases, the distinctions between ＂highbrow＂ and ＂lowbrow＂ taste actually had little to do with the content of the texts themselves, as books more often functioned as markers of socioeconomic status, like clothing or home décor. At the risk of being provocative, one might even go so far as to say that the concept of literary taste was more closely related to fashion sense than critical judgment. The anthology seeks to address this claim by examining how the tensions between consumerism and prestige reflect fundamental historical changes with regard to the development of technology, literacy, and social power. The individual chapters cover a wide range of historical periods, genres, and national literatures, and they are divided into four sections that focus on different ways in which the materiality of literature is related to cultural prestige. The first section, ＂Material Forms and Literary Publishing,＂ focuses on how writers and publishers used the material properties of books to enhance their symbolic value and to challenge the idea of literature as a mass-produced commodity. These material strategies thus served to reinforce traditional distinctions of taste, which were closely aligned with the power of the literary elite, as the consumers of deluxe editions often sought to acquire respect and admiration within their social spheres.

Anthony Enns is an associate professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University.

Bernhard Metz is an associate director of the SNF-funded project ＂Online-Edition der Rezensionen und Briefe Albrecht von Hallers＂ at the University of Bern.