The Clerk's Tale

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Moral Economy of Literacy
Chapter One
Accounting for Character: Diaries and the Moral Practice of Everyday Life
The Coin of Character
Memory and the Commonplace Tradition
Self-Examination and the Devotions of Literacy
Time Is Money: The Value of the Future
Equality of Aspiration
Chapter Two
Forms of Feeling: Habit, Sociability, and the Domestication of Literary Taste
The Drill of Nature: Habits of Writing across Time
Letters and the Debts of Family
The Profit of Pleasure
The Art of Conversation
Sentimental Pathos and the Conventions of Intimacy
Chapter Three
Popular Philosophy and Democratic Voice: Emerson in the Lecture Hall
Becoming Whole: The Struggle for Composure
Modes of Civic Education: The Public Lecture
The Eloquence of Moral Life
Chapter Four
Making Society out of Books: The New York Mercantile Library and the Enterprise of Reading
Circulating Libraries and the Business of Books
Reading and Breeding for the Profession
The Liberty of Intellect and the Taste for Fiction
Chapter Five
The Melancholy of White-Collar Work: Professional Ethos and the Modern Literary Sphere
The Blank Page and the Place of Writing
The Credit of Character, in Parts and Whole
Professional Authorship and the Literary Sphere
Epilogue: Debris from the Business of Living
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index