"A dazzling success. . . . Anyone interested in the history of high culture, literature, citizenship, or national identity in America will delight in Kaplan's nuanced and insightful work."
--
Maryland Historical Magazine"[A] tightly constructed and well-written book. . . . [Kaplan's] close reading of printed and manuscript sources subtly teases meaning out of often opaque material."
--
The Historian"[A] thoughtful book."
--
Bookforum"Forces us to move beyond a national framework and to foreground the local and regional networks at work in the post-Revolutionary era."
--
Common-Place"A superb account of the emergence of a brittle cultural elite in the first two decades of the early American republic."
--
Winterthur Portfolio"Makes . . . significant contributions to the evolving cultural history of the eighteenth century. . . . Well-researched and well-written. . . . The best historical monograph on Shaftesburian literary communities in the post-Revolutionary period."
-
Eighteenth-Century Studies"Presents . . . theoretically sophisticated arguments that are nevertheless grounded in well-researched historical material contexts. . . . Brings substantive historical research to bear on our ways of thinking about literature and the public sphere in the early U.S."
--
College Literature"Will be valued for its imaginative and nuanced insights into post-Revolutionary literary culture."
--
Journal of Southern History"The best historical monograph on Shaftesburian literary communities in the post-Revolutionary period."
--
Eighteenth-Century Studies"A rich source of information for scholars of the early republic, gender, and American cultural production and print media."
--
Journal of American History"Imaginatively conceived and beautifully written."
--
H-Net Reviews"[A] treasure trove of remarkable insights. . . . Kaplan's brilliant work deserves wide readership for the way in which it reveals how various Federalists invented a version of citizenship predicated on social and cultural rather than political bonds."
--
The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography"Insightful. . . . Subtly nuanced. . . . Delineates the mutable character of, and complex relationship between, those broad political and cultural concepts . . . that some scholars of eighteenth-century America tend to deploy rather loosely or monolithically."
--
William and Mary Quarterly"A thoughtful and well-researched book."
--
The New England QuarterlyBriskly readable, well researched, and informative . . .
--Michael Warner, Yale University
This book will become a standard work in the cultural history of the new Republic and a classic on the origins of the American intellectual class.
--David S. Shields, University of South Carolina
Anyone interested in the birth of American national literature should read (and enjoy) this excellent book.
--Ruth Bloch, University of California, Los Angeles
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
