Constructing American lives : biography & culture in nineteenth-century America / by Casper, Scott E.

Table of Contents: “…Biographical mania : toward a cultural history of genre -- Didactic nationalism versus Johnsonian theory, 1790-1830 : Fables of Parson Weems -- Representative men and women, 1820-1860 : Two readers' worlds -- Truth and tradition, nation and section, 1820-1860 : Hawthorne, Sparks, and biography at midcentury -- The inner man in the literary market, 1850-1880 : James A. …”