Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. List of Illustrations ix
4. Acknowledgments xi
5. Introduction: The Moral Economy of Literacy 1
6. Chapter One Accounting for Character: Diaries and the Moral Practice of Everyday Life
7. The Coin of Character 24
8. Memory and the Commonplace Tradition 33
9. Self-Examination and the Devotions of Literacy 41
10. Time Is Money: The Value of the Future 48
11. Equality of Aspiration 55
12. Chapter Two Forms of Feeling: Habit, Leisure, and the Domestication of Literary Taste
13. The Drill of Nature 66
14. Letters and the Debts of Family 71
15. The Profit of Pleasure 79
16. The Art of Conversation 93
17. Sentimental Pathos and the Conventions of Intimacy 104
18. Chapter Three Popular Philosophy and Democratic Voice: Emerson in the Lecture Hall
19. Becoming Whole: The Struggle for Composure 120
20. Modes of Civic Education 128
21. The Eloquence of Moral Life 144
22. Chapter Four Making Society out of Books: The New York Mercantile Library and the Enterprise of Reading
23. Circulating Libraries and the Business of Books 164
24. Reading and Breeding for the Profession 175
25. The Liberty of Intellect and the Taste for Fiction 191
26. Chapter Five The Melancholy of White-Collar Work: Professional Ethos and the Modern Literary Sphere
27. The Blank Page and the Place of Writing 209
28. The Credit of Character, in Parts and Whole 219
29. Professional Authorship and the Literary Sphere 232
30. Epilogue: Debris from the Business of Living
31. Epilogue 255
32. Notes 269
33. Selected Bibliography 305
34. Index 309