Abstract:This article explores the landscape of retail bookstores in New York City between 1820 and 1860, tracking patterns of growth and trade through original maps and examining the material and symbolic significance of the built environment of bookstores. Antebellum New York City was an incubator for the emerging forms and functions of the retail bookstore. These bookstores sold more than books—not only a wide variety of material goods, but also ideals of the book-buying consumer and models for public engagement with print. This article narrates a transition in forms of literary sociability occasioned by the material and social space of the bookstore by examining two stores operated by D. Appleton & Co. from the 1830s through the 1850s. In playing with the relationship between civic and commercial forms and values, Appleton’s stores highlight the precarious—and sometimes paradoxical—values underlying the bookstore’s ideals of public engagement with print. By layering scales—physical and social geography, the city and store, the map and narrative—“In the Bookstore” demonstrates the significance of local literary spaces to broader conceptions of book culture.

中文翻译：

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在书店：阿普尔顿之家和纽约市战前的图书文化

摘要：本文探讨了 1820 年至 1860 年间纽约市零售书店的景观，通过原始地图追踪增长和贸易模式，并考察书店建筑环境的物质和象征意义。战前纽约市是零售书店新兴形式和功能的孵化器。这些书店出售的不仅仅是书籍——不仅是种类繁多的物质商品，还有购书消费者的理想和公众参与印刷品的模型。本文通过考察 D. Appleton & Co. 从 1830 年代到 1850 年代经营的两家商店，叙述了由书店的物质和社会空间引起的文学社交形式的转变。在处理公民与商业形式和价值观之间的关系时，阿普尔顿的商店突出了书店公众参与印刷品理想背后的不稳定——有时是矛盾的——价值观。通过分层尺度——自然和社会地理、城市和商店、地图和叙述——“书店里”展示了当地文学空间对更广泛的书籍文化概念的重要性。