Republic of Intellect - The Friendly Club of New York City and the Making of American Literature

Acknowledgments ix Introduction. "There exists in this city, a small association of men" 1 PART ONE. ASSOCIATIONS Prelude. Pictures at an Exhibition 17 One. "The Town is the only place for rational beings": Sociability, Science, and the Literature of Intimate Inquiry 24 Two. Dangerous Associations: The Illuminati Conspiracy Scare as a Crisis of Public Intellectual Authority 50 Three. Unrestrained Conversation and the "Understanding of Woman": Radicalism, Feminism, and the Challenge of Polite Society 92 PART TWO. INDUSTRIES OF KNOWLEDGE Prelude. James Kent, Legal Knowledge, and the Politics of Print 145 Four. The Public Is in the House: William Dunlap's Park Theatre and the Making of American Audiences 154 Five. "Here was fresh matter for discourse": Yellow Fever, the Medical Repository, and Arthur Mervyn 189 Coda. The End of the American Enlightenment: Samuel Miller's A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century 231 Appendix. Friendly Club Membership and Nineteenth-Century New York City Historiography 243 Abbreviations 249 Notes 251 Index 311