Publishing the Family

Publishing the Family is June Howard’s companion study of the serial novel The Whole Family. Howard uses this unique project it as a lens through which to examine turn-of-the-century American publishing, gender relations, narrative forms, and ideas of the individual, the family, and the public and intimate spheres. Above all, she shows the great extent to which authorship is an effort thoroughly entwined with the cultural and commercial processes of its specific time and milieu. In addition to describing the origins of The Whole Family and details of its creation, Howard examines the history, immense cultural cachet, and subsequent fate of the novel’s publishing house, Harper Brothers. Turn-of-the-century American ideas and anxieties about the family are a focus as well, as Howard reveals the cultural context within which the authors of The Whole Family worked to create their fictional family. She also discusses the era’s concept of the New Woman and how this idea was incorporated into the novel, the different ways scholars have approached the concept of sentimentality, and the commercial context of The Whole Family, describing how individual contributors related to the market and how they translated their ideas regarding the intersection of art and commerce into fictional prose.