Background
He lives in State College, Pennsylvania, where he was born, and also in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Michael Anesko
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Harvard University; Pennsylvania State University.
Career
He is perhaps best known for his studies of 19th-century American novelists, in particular, Henry James and William Dean Howells. He is currently a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, planning to return to teaching in fall 2008 after a year-long sabbatical, and previously served as faculty advisor for the department"s undergraduate honors program Educated at Penn State and Harvard, Anesko published in 1986 a groundbreaking study of the economic factors that shaped Henry James" literary career.
Titled "Friction with the Market": Henry James and the Profession of Authorship, the book argued against the image of James as a mandarin artist who ignored the dictates of the marketplace.
The collection, Letters, Fictions, Lives: Henry James and William Dean Howells showed how the two writers" careers developed from their earliest days to eventual prominence in their profession. Again, the focus was on the interaction between professional demands and artistic development.
Besides these books Anesko has contributed many articles to journals and anthologies on American literature, especially the 19th century realists. He is a past president of the Henry James Society (publisher of the Henry James Review) and has been honored for his work as a faculty advisor at Penn State.
His research interests include the history of book publishing, authorship as a profession, and sociological aspects of literature.
He has written a study of nineteenth-century French critics of the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, which will be published by Ohio State University Press.
Connections
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Born
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Died
1909 (aged 2) -
Nationality
United States