Moses Dresser Phillips (1813-1859) was an important member of the Antebellum literary marketplace. If mentioned in discussions of Antebellum publishing at all, Phillips is usually noted for creating the Atlantic Monthly, one of his most distinguished achievements, or for deciding not to publish Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of his most costly errors. Although one of the most powerful figures in the literary marketplace, Phillips died in 1859 at age forty-six. Life dealt him a short tenure as a result of the stress caused by the Panic of 1857, an event over which he could play no controlling hand.

At the founding dinner for his magazine, shortly before the Panic started, Phillips asserted his power over the new periodical and its promotion:

Mr. Cabot is much wiser than I am. Dr. Holmes can write funnier verses than I can. Mr. Motley can write better history than I. Mr. Emerson is a philosopher and I am not. Mr. Lowell knows more of the old poets than I. But none of you knows the American people as well as I do (Phillips, as cited in Hale, 1899, p. 158).

Having experienced highs and lows in his business career, Phillips understood that knowledge of consumer tastes and audience familiarity with one's firm were more crucial elements for success than any specific author's talent for writing history, poetry, comedy or philosophy.

Phillips was but one mid-century publisher whose professional success relied on an ongoing dialogue with the "American people.î During a continuing conversation through market offering and response, publishers and people worked together as valued voices in each otherís worlds. As Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and Keith Sawyer (1995) emphasize,ěthe creator can only work within the context of a dialogue with othersî (p. 329). Csikszentmihalyi and Sawyer propose a four stage model of insight (preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation/elaboration) through which creators, such as Moses Dresser Phillips, make their decisions.

Some of these stages, such as the preparation stage of information gathering, and the evaluation/elaboration stage of sharing the findings from insight with others, include interaction with other people. Two, incubation and insight, are solitary stages during which the creator subconsciously processes the information that had been gathered diachronically, during the preparation stage, in a synchronic fashion, then comes to a new understanding of the material (Csikszentmihaly & Sawyer, 1995). The insights he had about the ěAmerican peopleî by the time of the Atlantic Monthlyís founding in 1857, then, were the result of the fifteen years Moses Dresser Phillips had spent learning through an on-going interaction in which the ěAmerican peopleî constituted a key voice. In an examination of the Antebellum publishing world, books and periodicals serve as the material representations of the constantly created, mutually dependent, dialogue between publishers, the creators of the objects, and their intended audiences concerning societal issues and cultural tastes.

Economic stability is necessary for an effective cultural dialogue to take place. Publishers need the financial resources to produce, and people are required to have the funds to purchase, the books and periodicals through which social issues and popular taste are debated. The period between the early 1840s, after the recovery from the Panic of 1837, and the late 1850s, when the Panic of 1857 caused Phillips, Sampson and Company author William Hickling Prescott to assert that ě[b]ooks are in the category of superfluities, and will make no figures until people have money to throw away,î was one cultural moment with potential for such a dialogue. (W.H. Prescott to W.G. Prescott, letter, January 31, 1858, as cited in Gardiner, 1964, 385). Speaking of this period, Eugene Exman (1965) notes: ěPerhaps never before or after did America reach a more generous and eager hand to book publishers than in the ten years beginning in the mid-fortiesî(p. 231). Moses Dresser Phillips, whose career is framed, to a large extent, between the two Panics, serves as a case study for examining the ways that publishers came to ěknowî and to influence their audiences.

During his career, Moses D. Phillips demonstrated an enterprising nature, an ambition to participate in several areas of production and distribution, a willingness to compete with well-known firms, a clear ability to lead his firm, and an affinity for "reading" public taste. A study of Phillips not only reveals the creative strategies of this wise man, but also corrects the misconception that the intended and actual audiences for his Atlantic were simply highbrow in nature. Instead, the Atlantic Monthly was designed to attract and to provide leadership for the constantly expanding wide audience of readers familiar with the Phillips, Sampson and Company imprint.

I studied Moses Dresser Phillips and his firm for my dissertation topic. The information presented above comes from McMaster, M. (2001) A Publisher's Hand: Strategic Gambles and Cultural Leadership by Moses Dresser Phillips in Antebellum America (Doctoral dissertation, College of William and Mary, 2001). (UMI Number 3026409. Copyright 2001 by McMaster, MaryKate. All rights reserved.) I'm currently revising the manuscript into book form.