Leaving New York: Publishing Twentieth-Century US Literature Elsewhere
Co-authored with Luca Messarra.
This project extends previous work on nineteenth century imprints into the twentieth century.
Manuscript information
This essay is forthcoming in American Literary History 38.3 in 2026.
Abstract
Who doesn’t believe that most American literature is published in New York City? Our analysis of 303,563 Library of Congress records reveals the expected rise followed by the unexpected fall of NYC in twentieth-century American literary publishing. NYC only published most works of American literature cataloged by the LC between 1947 and 1963, peaking in 1956 and declining sharply thereafter. That decline does not reflect decreased publishing in NYC, but rather increased growth elsewhere. Changes in printing technology and the business of publishing best explain these trends. As offset lithography and phototypesetting displaced letterpress, older presses became available for cheap, allowing publishers outside NYC to print “real” books whose aesthetic would be archivable as American literature. In conjunction with new cataloguing standards, NEA grant funding, and the rise of third-party distributors, declining costs deregionalized the small press. These findings nuance conventional narratives of conglomeration since consolidation of capital and proliferation of publishers happened simultaneously. And they challenge the erroneous assumption that NYC’s qualitative dominance entails its quantitative dominance. US literary histories can benefit from attending to the supply-side of literary production. Doing so reveals that the periphery is not peripheral.