“In a course of publications”: Seriality, Public Recognition, and Judith Sargent Murray’s <i>The Gleaner</i> (1792–1798)

Abstract This article places Judith Sargent Murray’s The Gleaner in the context of U. S. publishing infrastructures of the 1790 s, exploring Murray’s gender-switching literature as a media-rhetorical print experiment. It argues that The Gleaner enacts a multi-modal drag performance that both challenges and partially reconfirms the protocols of white male identity mediation in the early republic. Addressing the centrality of impersonation, self-sentimentalization, and political indignation in early American literature, the article goes on to analyze the seriality of Murray’s collection through a close reading of the first episodes of “Story of Margaretta” (a sentimental narrative embedded in The Gleaner ). It concludes with a discussion of Murray’s transformation of classical notions of “fame” into a serial project of “recognition”, showing how central tenets and facets of early American liberalism (such as deliberation, competition, and the public sphere) were shaped by their techno-communicative conditions of possibility, particularly serial publication and serial circulation.