Database of American Authorship, 1860-1920

Principle investigator: Dr. Michael Anesko, Professor of English and American Studies

DLA Advisor: Dr. Jennifer Isasi

This dashboard enables interactive exploration of a “Database of American Authorship, 1860-1920,” drawing upon publishing and sales data from major American publishing houses during the transformative period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Wherever possible, the database includes actual sales figures (or informed estimates) and royalty information for a broad sample of authors and works, allowing for a much more accurate reconstruction of the literary marketplace and facilitating comparative analyses across specific periods and according to variables such as authorship gender, literary genre, binding states, and retail price.

This dynamic, accessible data dashboard aggregates and visualizes economic data for American authorship, from book sales to authorial earnings. This resource will provide a robust foundation for scholars to investigate trends and disparities in the literary marketplace across variables like gender, genre, and historical periods. With this data, researchers will be able to perform longitudinal analyses that reveal shifts over time, offering a valuable perspective on the socio-economic landscape of American literature during this era.

Existing scholarship on this period has often relied on anecdotal evidence from publishers’ memoirs and “official” house histories, almost all lacking comprehensive quantitative data. This project, however, moves beyond these sources, building a database grounded in empirical evidence derived from prominent publishers’ archives.

For more information, contact mwa2@psu.edu