SOURCE: “News and Fiction: Prescriptions for Living,” in The Fear of Sinking: The American Success Formula in the Gilded Age, University of Tennessee Press, 1996, pp. 1-7.
In the essay below, Kilmer discusses the popularity of the “rags-to-riches” success formula during the Gilded Age, suggesting that news items as well as bardic tales featuring these types of formulaic plots often served as reminders to readers that “honor, public esteem, and fidelity could not be bought.”
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