Literary Dollars & Social Sense shows common Americans apprehending the newly industrialized literary marketplace through their reading and gossiping, addressing it through their writing and editing, and serving it through their vending and distributing. Using diaries and letters, the Zborays uncover a neglected, yet pivotal moment in the history of modern mass-market publishing.

Prior to the Civil War, publishing in America underwent a transformation from a genteel artisan trade supported by civic patronage and religious groups to a thriving, cut-throat national industry propelled by profit. Literary Dollars and Social Sense represents an important chapter in the historical experience of print culture, it illuminates the phenomenon of amateur writing and delineates the access points of the emerging mass market for print for distributors consumers and writers. It challenges the conventional assumptions that the literary public had little trouble embracing the new literary marketing that emerged at mid-century. The book uncover the tensions that author's faced between literature's role in the traditional moral economy and the lure of literary dollars for personal gain and fame. This book marks an important example in how scholars understand and conduct research in American literature.

'Overall, this is a significant, highly readable, and exhaustively researched study of a particularly dynamic period in the history of American authorship.' - The Journal of American History