The Popular Book

The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste by James D. Hart traces how ordinary readers across four centuries have shaped, and been shaped by, what they read. Beginning with the utilitarian choices of the Mayflower settlers, Hart follows the growth of a reading public that consumed everything from psalm books, almanacs, and captivity narratives to sentimental novels, Gothic romances, and practical manuals. He reveals how America’s literary marketplace grew in tandem with shifting social, religious, and political contexts—from Puritan piety and Enlightenment rationalism to Revolutionary pamphleteering, the sentimentalism of the early republic, and the rise of mass-market fiction. Through detailed case studies of best sellers like Pilgrim’s Progress, Common Sense, Charlotte Temple, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the book demonstrates how popular texts mirrored and molded cultural values.

Far from a simple chronology of American letters, Hart’s work situates literature within the everyday life of communities, households, and circulating libraries, emphasizing how reading habits illuminate broader cultural transformations. By examining probate inventories, publishers’ invoices, and anecdotal evidence, he uncovers the texture of ordinary literary experience and challenges traditional hierarchies of taste. The Popular Book ultimately presents a vivid cultural history of how Americans—from colonial settlers to nineteenth-century consumers—defined themselves through what they chose to read, offering essential insights into the dynamics of literary popularity and the evolving relationship between print and public.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1950.