The Genuine Article

“[A]n interesting and demanding study that blends literary criticism with sociology and . . . aesthetics and psychology . . . . [H]ighly recommended . . . .” - S. I. Bellman , Choice

“[F]ascinating. . . . Summary cannot do justice to the finer points of Gilmore’s argument. Gilmore is never reductionist, always embracing greater complexity and nuance with certainty and good humor. He keeps race, class, and gender constantly but distinctly in play, never muddling matters with lazy prose or jargon. He is at his best, however, when he pushes past his thesis -- the reclamation of manhood by authors threatened with market emasculation -- to examine its implications for masculinity more generally. . . . [C]ompelling.” - Stephen W. Berry II , Journal of the Early Republic

"Carefully researched and innovative, [Gilmore's] study presents an impressive analysis of marketplace cross currents in constructions of identity in nineteenth-century America. . . . . Gilmore's argument is intriguing and his scholarship is impressive. . . . Revisionist and persuasive, The Genuine Article is immensely provocative." - Brian Edwards , Australasian Journal of American Studies

"Paul Gilmore's The Genuine Article deftly analyzes the . . . cultural contradictions and ambivalences [of the first decades of the nineteenth century.] . . . [A] far-ranging survey." - T. Walter Herbert , Men and Masculinities

"There is much valuable material in The Genuine Article. Gilmore includes fascinating examples of freak shows and race images, and his interpretations are often penetrating."

- Mark Bauerlein , Journal of American History

[I]ntelligent…. Duke University Press, and the New Americanists Series, are … to be commended for their support of young scholars and their early works…. [L]ong overdue…. The Genuine Article does what good first books do.” - Bryce Traister , Nineteenth-Century Contexts

“A brilliantly conceived, carefully built, nuanced, and important study of the ongoing consolidation of white middle-class manhood in the antebellum United States.” - Dana Nelson, author of National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men

“Richly informative and conceptually sophisticated, Paul Gilmore’s book argues that antebellum white male writers appropriated racialized body images from mass culture to market their antimarket manhood. Gilmore shows how unstable images of raced authenticity helped to stabilize literary manhood’s ‘impossible ideal,’ to be in and above market culture.” - David Leverenz, University of Florida