Description: A history of the periodicals that brought art and sophistication to a rising bourgeoisie in the heartland
Brief description: Cynthia Lee Patterson is associate professor of English at University of South Florida. She is author of Art for the Middle Classes: America's Illustrated Magazines of the 1840s, published by University Press of Mississippi, and her work has appeared in such publications as American Periodicals and The Journal of African American History.
Review Quotes: Cynthia Lee Patterson's comprehensive Art for the Middle Classes: America's Illustrated Magazines of the 1840s studies the 'embellishments'--the hundreds of engravings and illustrations that provided art to eager middle-class readers of the 'Philadelphia Pictorials, ' the five monthly magazines that reigned supreme in the US in the 1840s. Drawing on archival materials concerning the relationships among editors, artists, and writers, the nature of the reading audiences, new technologies of image reproduction, and the economics of distribution patterns and practices, Patterson argues that these periodical embellishments, virtually ignored in histories of art, are artifacts of broad historical, literary, and artistic significance. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, Art for the Middle Classes is an essential contribution to the fields of book history, periodicals, and American cultural history.--Susan Belasco, professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and past president of the Research Society for American Periodicals