Books by Joan Shelley Rubin

The proliferation of book clubs, reading groups, "outline" volumes, and new forms of book reviewing in the first half of the twentieth century influenced the tastes and pastimes of millions of Americans. Joan Rubin here provides the first comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon, the rise of American middlebrow culture, and the values encompassed by it.

Rubin shows how the sites and practices of reciting poetry influenced American readers' lives and helped them to find meaning in a poet's words. By blurring boundaries between "high" and "popular" poetry, and between modern and traditional, Rubin reveals a fuller, more democratic way of studying our poetic language and ourselves.