| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.1

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

The Fashioning of Middle-Class America: Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and Art and Antebellum Culture. By Heidi L. Nichols. (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2004. 165p. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $57.95.)
Heidi L. Nichols joins the ranks of other recent literary critics and historians in examining the cultural work performed by mid-nineteenth-century magazines. Concentrating solely on one Philadelphia monthly, Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and Art, and narrowing her focus further to the last two and a half years of the magazine's publication (1849–52), Nichols argues that Sartain's Union played a key role in promoting authorship in America and in constructing social roles for an emerging middle-class readership.	1
In chapter 1 Nichols lays out a brief history of the magazine, including the editorship of popular frontier novelist Caroline Kirkland, and of the change in ownership in 1849 to John Sartain, Philadelphia's leading mezzotint engraver. Nichols runs through the list of primary contributors—a list that includes not only the literary luminaries of the day, such as Poe, Bryant, Thoreau, Whitman, but also the popular women writers: Lydia Maria Child, Catharine Sedgwick, Lydia Sigourney, and others. Nichols also briefly mentions Sartain's Union's similarity to its primary competitors, Godey's and Graham's, but argues that Sartain's Union was unique in its promotion of a decidedly American literature and art.	. . .

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