Home The Author on Stage: The Redpath Lyceum Bureau and the Promotion of the “Literary” Lecture
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

The Author on Stage: The Redpath Lyceum Bureau and the Promotion of the “Literary” Lecture

  • Virginia Garnett EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: March 5, 2015
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

Identifying the “literary” lecture as a bridge between oratory and print, I argue for the platform’s centrality to the nineteenth-century literary marketplace. American lecture bureaus like the Redpath Lyceum Bureau employed an intricate system of print and oratory to create a market for lectures that both responded to and challenged notions of authorship at the fin de siècle. Authors such as Kate Field, Mark Twain, and James Whitcomb Riley used and were used by the platform to promote works in progress and works in print by offering readings, dramatic interpretations, critical commentaries, and personal reminiscences about writers and writing. By studying the promotional materials of the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, I demonstrate the lecture’s importance in defining literary activity and authorial celebrity during this period. Attending to the lecture and its wide influence, I argue further, allows us to examine orality’s unstable position in a then developing intellectual hierarchy.


Corresponding author: Dr. Virginia Garnett, Department of English, University of Delaware, 213 Memorial Hall, Newark, DE, 19716, USA, e-mail:

Works Cited

“Advertising Circular for The Innocents Abroad, 1869” (1869). Mark Twain Project. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.Search in Google Scholar

Augst, Thomas (2003). The Clerk’s Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in Nineteenth-Century America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226795737.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Berwick (1869). “Why Lyceums Fail.” Lyceum 4. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Search in Google Scholar

Bode, Carl F. (1956). The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Borus, Daniel H. (1989). Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Search in Google Scholar

Brodhead, Richard (1993). Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

“Business Notes: Newspaper Reports” (1875). Redpath’s Lyceum. August, n.p. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Search in Google Scholar

“Charles Dickens in Boston: Special Correspondence of the Herald; Boston Preserves Its Decorum – Fictions Gotten Up” (1867). New York Herald 32.335, December 1, 9.Search in Google Scholar

Cook, Nancy (1996). “Finding His Mark: Twain’s The Innocents Abroad as a Subscription Book.” Michele Moylan and Lane Stiles, eds. Reading Books: Essay on the Material Text and Literature in America. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Search in Google Scholar

Dickens, Charles (1868a). “George Silverman’s Explanation. I.” Atlantic Monthly 21.123, January, 118–123. Making of America. New York, NY: Cornell University Library.Search in Google Scholar

Dickens, Charles (1868b). “George Silverman’s Explanation. II.” Atlantic Monthly 21.124, February, 145–149. Making of America. New York, NY: Cornell University Library.Search in Google Scholar

Dickens, Charles (1868c). “George Silverman’s Explanation. III.” Atlantic Monthly 21.125, March, 277–283. Making of America. New York, NY: Cornell University Library.Search in Google Scholar

Dolby, George (1885). Charles Dickens As I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America (1866–1870). London: T. Fisher Unwin.Search in Google Scholar

Eastman, Carolyn (2009). A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public After the Revolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226180212.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Eubank, Marjorie Harrell (1968). The Redpath Lyceum Bureau from 1868–1901. Ann Arbor, MI: Diss. University of Michigan.Search in Google Scholar

F., A. (1883). “Mr. Emerson in the Lecture Room.” Atlantic Monthly 51.308. June, 818–832. Making of America. New York, NY: Cornell University Library.Search in Google Scholar

Field, Kate (1871). Pen Photographs of Charles Dickens: Taken From Life; New and Enlarged Edition. Boston, MA: James R. Osgood.Search in Google Scholar

“Fields, James T., LL.D.” (1878–1879). Redpath Lyceum Bureau 3. Redpath Chautauqua Bureau Records. Iowa City, IA: Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries.Search in Google Scholar

Garnett, Virginia (2013). “With Press and Paddle: William H. H. Murray’s ‘Adirondack’ Lectures and the Making of a Wilderness Guide.” Tom F. Wright, ed. The Cosmopolitan Lyceum: Lecture Culture and the Globe in Nineteenth-Century America. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 113–129.Search in Google Scholar

Garnett, Virginia (2014). The Podium in Print: The Popular Lecture in American Literary Culture, 1865–1914. Diss. University of Delaware, ProQuest. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertations Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Glazener, Nancy (1997). Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. Institution, 1850–1910. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth (1868). “The American Lecture-System.” Macmillan’s Magazine 18, 48–56.Search in Google Scholar

Hochman, Barbara (2001). Getting at the Author: Reimagining Books and Reading in the Age of American Realism. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Search in Google Scholar

Holland, J.G. (1872). “Topics of the Time: Triflers on the Platform.” Scribner’s Monthly 3.4, 489–491. Making of America. New York, NY: Cornell University Library.Search in Google Scholar

Horner, Charles F. (1926). Life of James Redpath. New York, NY: Barse & Hopkins.Search in Google Scholar

“How to Kill Lyceums” (1869). Lyceum 1. August, 4. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Search in Google Scholar

Howells, William Dean (1900). Literary Friends and Acquaintance: A Personal Retrospect of American Authorship. New York, NY: Harper and Brothers.Search in Google Scholar

“It Will Also Be Appreciated If You Will Kindly Paste Any Local Newspaper Comments on This Attraction Here.” Series 7: Business Files. Redpath Chautauqua Bureau Records. Iowa City, IA: Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries.Search in Google Scholar

“James Redpath to SLC, 24 April 1869” (1869). Mark Twain Project. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.Search in Google Scholar

“Kate Field Advertisement for Upcoming Lectures” (n.d.). Kate Field Papers. Boston, MA: Rare Books and Manuscripts, Boston Public Library.Search in Google Scholar

“Lectures: Past, Present, and Future” (1877–1878 [n.d.]). New York Graphic. Rpt. in Redpath Lyceum 9. Redpath Chautauqua Bureau Records. Iowa City, IA: Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries.Search in Google Scholar

Lupfer, Eric (2007). “The Business of American Magazines.” Scott E. Casper et al., eds. A History of the Book in America, The Industrial Book, 1840–1880. 3 vols. Chapel Hill, NC: American Antiquarian Society, University of North Carolina Press, 248–258.Search in Google Scholar

“Lyceums and Lecturing in America” (1871). All the World Round. 5.25, March 4, 317–321.Search in Google Scholar

McKivigan, John R. (2008). Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.10.7591/9781501732263Search in Google Scholar

Meckier, Jerome (2002). “Charles Dickens, George Dolby, and New York in 1867–1868.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 15.1, 39–46.Search in Google Scholar

Newbury, Michael (1994). “Eaten Alive: Slavery and Celebrity in Antebellum America.” ELH 61.1, 159–187.10.1353/elh.1994.0007Search in Google Scholar

Phelps, William Lyon (1930). Letters of James Whitcomb Riley. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.Search in Google Scholar

Pond, James Burton (1900). Eccentricities of Genius: Memories of Famous Men and Women of the Platform and Stage. New York, NY: G.W. Dillingham.Search in Google Scholar

“Printing” (1875). Redpath’s Lyceum. August, n.p. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Search in Google Scholar

“Printing” (1875–1876). Redpath’s Lyceum, n.p. Redpath Chautauqua Bureau Records. Iowa City, IA: Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries.Search in Google Scholar

Quilbert, Philip (1870). “Drift-wood.” Galaxy 9.3. March, 418–421. Making of America. New York, NY: Cornell University Library. 2005.Search in Google Scholar

Redpath, James (1875). “Hints for Lyceum Managers.” Redpath’s Lyceum. August, 7–8. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Search in Google Scholar

“Redpath Lyceum Bureau” (n.d.). Bulletin-Program. Redpath Chautauqua Bureau Records. Iowa City, IA: Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries.Search in Google Scholar

Scharnhorst, Gary (2004). “Kate Field’s ‘An Evening with Charles Dickens’: A Reconstructed Lecture.” Dickens Quarterly 21.2, 71–89.Search in Google Scholar

Scott, Donald M. (1983). “Print and the Public Lecture System, 1840–1860.” William L. Joyce et al., eds. Printing and Society in Early America. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Search in Google Scholar

Sedgwick, Ellery (1994). A History of the Atlantic Monthly, 1857–1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tideand Ebb. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Search in Google Scholar

Shumway, David R. (1994). “Creating American Civilization: A Genealogy of American Literature as an Academic Discipline.” American Culture. 11 vols. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 96–103.Search in Google Scholar

“SLC to Elisha Bliss, Jr., 22 July 1869, Elmira, N.Y.” (1869). “Mark Twain’s Letters, 1869.” Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Dahlia Armon, eds. Mark Twain Project. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.Search in Google Scholar

The American Literary Magazine and Lecture Season (1871). New York, NY: American Literary Bureau. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.Search in Google Scholar

“This Magazine” (1875). Redpath’s Lyceum. August, 6. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Search in Google Scholar

Twain, Mark (1976). “‘Roughing It’ Lecture, 1871–1872.” Paul Fatout, ed. Mark Twain Speaking. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.Search in Google Scholar

Twain, Mark (2001). The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Ed. Charles Neider. New York, NY: Perennial Classics.Search in Google Scholar

Twain, Mark (2010). The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Ed. Harriet Elinor Smith. 1 vol. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar

Van Allen, Elizabeth J. (1999). James Whitcomb Riley: A Life. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Warren, James Perrin (1999). Culture of Eloquence: Oratory and Reform in Antebellum America. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Whipple, E.P. (1867). “The Genius of Dickens.” Atlantic Monthly 19.115, 546–554.Search in Google Scholar

Whiting, Lilian (1900). Kate Field: A Record. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.Search in Google Scholar

“Why Lyceums Fail” (1869). Lyceum 1. August, 4. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Search in Google Scholar

Wilson, R. Jackson (1989). Figures of Speech: American Writers and the Literary Marketplace, from Benjamin Franklin to Emily Dickinson. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, A. Augustus, ed. (1906). Who’s Who in the Lyceum. Philadelphia, PA: Pearson Brothers.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, Tom F., ed. (2013). The Cosmopolitan Lyceum: Lecture Culture and the Globe in Nineteenth-Century America. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2015-3-5
Published in Print: 2015-3-1

©2015 by De Gruyter

Downloaded on 13.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/zaa-2015-0004/html
Scroll to top button