Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-199) and index.

Preface -- Cultural mediation of the print medium -- Res Publica of letters -- Franklin: representational politics of the man of letters -- Textuality and legitimacy in the printed constitution -- Nationalism and the problem of republican literature -- Novel: fantasies of publicity -- Notes -- Index.

Overview: The subject of Michael Warner's book is the rise of a nation. America, he shows, became a nation by developing a new kind of reading public, where one becomes a citizen by taking ones place as writer or reader. At heart, the United States is a republic of letters, and its birth can be dated from changes in the culture of printing in the early eighteenth century. The new and widespread use of print media transformed the relations between people and power in a way that set in motion the republican structure of government we have inherited.