Reprinting, Circulation, and the Network Author in Antebellum Newspapers
Published Aug 27, 2015 · Ryan Cordell, Jonathan Elmer, T. Katz
American Literary History
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Abstract
When Louis F. Anderson took over the editorship of the Houma Ceres in 1856, he admitted that he was “not . . . very distinguished as a ‘knight of the gray goose quill,’” but assured his new readers that “our pen will not lead us into difficulty” because “our ‘principal assistant,’ the scissors, will be called into frequent requisition—believing as we do, that a good selection is always preferable to a bad editorial.” Thus, Anderson sums up a set of attitudes toward the production, authorship, and circulation of newspaper content within a system founded on textual borrowing. In the antebellum US context, circulation often substituted for authorship; the authority of the newspaper rested on networks of information exchange that underlay its production. “Nothing but a newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment,” Alexis de Tocqueville writes, describing circulation as a technology—like the rail and telegraph— compressing space and time, linking individuals around the nation by “talk[ing] to you briefly every day of the common weal” (111). In both examples, the newspaper’s primary value stems from whom and how it connects. Antebellum newspaper pages were replete with anonymous or pseudonymous texts, culled from other papers or cited merely as “making the rounds.” In such a textual environment, the value of widely reprinted snippets derived from their movement through the