• Critical Fictions: Fanny Fern, Critical Satire, and the Gender Inequities of Antebellum Criticism
• Adam Gordon (bio)

On February 25, 1832, the New-York Mirror published as its feature story an anonymous original piece entitled “The Young Author, or the Effects of Criticism,” which recounts the tale of a young poet whose confrontation with critics ultimately proves fatal. Born rich, Edwin lost his parents at a young age and settled into a solitary, impoverished existence in which poetry became his one solace. Though Edwin’s poems possessed beauty and originality, he was a young and inexperienced author, and so the volume naturally had faults as well, which “the critics attacked as vigorously as if their salvation depended upon prostrating the luckless author.”¹ With his hopes dashed and his sense of vocation destroyed, Edwin’s health rapidly deteriorates, already weakened by the physical and emotional strain of authorship.

As Edwin hovers on the brink of death, the story’s unnamed narrator learns of his condition, peruses the volume in question, and is immediately struck by the poems’ beauty. Astonished that critics had attacked the collection so viciously, the narrator seeks out the offending reviewers only to learn that “of the two least powerful one was a bigot and the other a voluptuary” and that “the third was a young editor of promise, but still young, very young.”² When he visits the author of the first review, the meanest of the three, he finds a “sickly, unhappy looking creature,” hunched and dyspeptic.³ “I knew him for a bigot and a wretch,” the narrator observes, “and an involuntary feeling of disgust and hatred crept into my heart as I reflected that a hypochondriac and a bigot stood thus behind an engine of such power as a public press must generally be, controlling its operations and directing its force against the enemies of ignorance, superstition, and [End Page 21] malice.”⁴ It takes little prodding on the part of the narrator to get the misanthropic critic to admit that he was once slighted by Edwin’s father and so detests both Edwin and his family. As he spitefully remarks, “They who once scorned me, now fear me, and shall feel me.”⁵ The next reviewer he visits, a young editor, confesses he spurned the volume out of mere carelessness, admitting that short on time he “looked hastily through it, but founded my opinion of it from that of contemporary print.”⁶ When the narrator has him survey the poems again, the editor, embarrassed by his mistake, immediately issues an apologetic retraction as well as a second positive review in the next issue. And though the narrator rushes to Edwin’s bedside to deliver the commendatory review, he’s too late. Edwin is dead.

Beginning in the late 1820s, as a consolidating print-capitalist marketplace began to eclipse the older networks of local artisan printers, works like “The Young Author” began appearing in greater number, setting the standard for a developing genre of fictionalized exposés of the American critical enterprise. In the story of Edwin, the author blends fictional melodrama with firsthand observations regarding the experience of authorship, catering to a public fascination with the inherent drama of the literary industry. For the narrator, the pathos of Edwin’s case is that an author’s livelihood is placed in the hands of critics whose judgment is marred by petty animosities, on the one hand, and irresponsible carelessness, on the other. As the narrator reflects,

The public would be shocked if they could behold in palpable form the vast proportion of criticisms appearing in the journals of this country, which are influenced by private feelings. He who from personal friendship praises a book or a composition undeservedly is, in fact, committing a falsehood, and cheating his readers; but what shall we say of him who sits in the obscure safety of his chamber, and gratifies a malignant enmity against an author, by vilifying his works? This course is pursued in the United States to an extent most disgraceful, if not alarming.⁷

Though such stories were designed to be amusing and are no doubt exaggerated, they provided popular platforms for debates over...

• 批评小说：范妮·弗恩 (Fanny Fern)、批评讽刺和战前批评的性别不平等
• 亚当·戈登（生平）

1832年 2 月 25 日，《纽约镜报》发表了一篇匿名原创文章作为专题报道，题为“年轻作家，或批评的影响”，讲述了一位年轻诗人与批评家的对抗最终证明是致命的故事。埃德温出身富贵，自幼丧父，过着孤独、贫困的生活，诗歌成为他唯一的慰藉。埃德温的诗虽有美感和独创性，但他是一位年轻且缺乏经验的作者，自然也有缺点，“评论家们猛烈抨击，仿佛他们的救赎取决于倒霉的作者”。^1个随着他的希望破灭和他的职业意识被摧毁，埃德温的健康状况迅速恶化，已经被作者的身体和情感压力削弱了。

当埃德温徘徊在死亡边缘时，故事的无名叙述者得知了他的病情，仔细阅读了相关的书，并立即被诗歌的美丽所震撼。评论家如此恶毒地攻击该系列，这让叙述者感到惊讶，叙述者找到了冒犯的评论家，结果发现“两个最不强大的评论家是一个偏执狂，另一个是贪婪的人”，“第三个是一位年轻的承诺编辑，但还年轻，非常年轻。” ²当他拜访第一篇评论的作者（三人中最卑鄙的一位）时，他发现一个“病态、不快乐的人”，驼背且消化不良。^3个叙述者说：“我知道他是一个偏执狂和一个坏蛋，当我想到一个忧郁症患者和一个偏执狂站在像公共媒体这样强大的机器后面通常必须控制其行动并将其力量用于对抗无知、迷信和[End Page 21]恶意的敌人。” ⁴叙述者几乎不费吹灰之力，就让厌恶人类的批评家承认他曾经被埃德温的父亲轻视，因此厌恶埃德温和他的家人。正如他恶意评论的那样，“那些曾经蔑视我的人，现在害怕我，并且会感觉到我。” ^5个他拜访的下一位审稿人是一位年轻的编辑，他承认他只是出于粗心而拒绝了这本书，并承认他在很短的时间内“匆匆看了一遍，但从当代印刷品的观点中得出了我对它的看法”。⁶当叙述者让他重新审视这些诗时，编辑为自己的错误感到尴尬，立即道歉撤稿，并在下一期进行第二次正面评价。尽管解说员冲到埃德温的床边发表赞扬性评论，但为时已晚。埃德温死了。

从 1820 年代后期开始，随着不断巩固的印刷资本主义市场开始让当地工匠印刷商的旧网络黯然失色，像“年轻的作者”这样的作品开始大量出现，为一种发展中的美国虚构揭露类型设定了标准关键企业。在埃德温的故事中，作者将虚构的情节剧与对作者经历的第一手观察相结合，迎合了公众对文学行业内在戏剧性的迷恋。对于叙述者来说，埃德温案例的悲哀在于，一位作家的生计被置于批评家的手中，他们的判断一方面受到小仇恨的影响，另一方面又受到不负责任的粗心大意的影响。正如叙述者所反映的那样，

如果公众能够以明显的形式看到这个国家的期刊上出现的大量受私人感情影响的批评，他们会感到震惊。出于私交而对一本书或一篇作文不当称赞的人，实际上是在撒谎，在欺骗读者；但是，对于坐在隐蔽安全的房间里，通过诽谤作者的作品来满足对作者的恶毒仇恨的人，我们该怎么说呢？在美国，这种做法即使不令人震惊，也达到了最可耻的程度。⁷

尽管这些故事被设计成有趣的，而且无疑被夸大了，但它们为关于……的辩论提供了流行的平台。