This study explores the marketability of Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales, published in the US in 1934. The term marketability is used to refer to the book as a potentially desirable object for sale on the market, successfully promoted by the Book-of-the-Month-Club whose members were intent on educating themselves and refining their taste. The set-up and marketing strategies of the Book-of-the-Month-Club are considered in relation to the role of advertising as a discourse teaching social and personal values in a developing consumer culture where identity and personality were represented as never-ending, imperative projects.  The consuming self is an individual freed from the restraints of tradition and communal values, making her free choice of whom to be on an increasingly diverse market, endlessly reinventing her identity. But this self is also a commodity on an increasingly complex and impersonal market where appearance is destiny. A historically contextualized reading of Seven Gothic Tales makes it possible to use the term marketability to refer to the work itself as a literary investigation of the conditions of identity-construction in a culture dominated by market-mediated relationships. In this reading, the Great Depression figures as a moment that reveals the degree to which consumerist ideology and logic had come to determine the possibilities of imagining being and identity, a condition that Seven Gothic Tales both reflects and resists. The effect of globalized transformation of production and consumption were felt in the two places that went into the making of Seven Gothic Tales: the US where it was first published and colonial Kenya where the author lived between 1914 and 1931 and where the book was begun. This study argues that the success of Seven Gothic Tales in the US depended on the way in which Blixen/Dinesen's experience of colonial Kenya was an experience of commercial modernity that reverberated with the experience of the American readers. Central to this argument is the ideal of feudalism as an explicit and decisive element in the creation of colonial Kenya. The aristocratic theme that permeates Seven Gothic Tales must be understood in relation to a colonial socioeconomic context that reinvented the feudal ideal as a marketable commodity at a time when social status and identity had become negotiable on a consumer market.

In 1926 the Book-of-the-Month Club sent its first selection to 4,750 members. Twenty three years later the club had 4,000,000 members, had distributed over 100,000,000 books, and was one of sixty such clubs operating in the United States. Much discussion has taken place and many articles have been written during this period relative to the merits of these organizations. The attacks have been made largely on the following points: (1) the organization was foisting on the public in dictatorial fashion prescribed reading; (2) emphasis was placed on economy, rather than the excellence of the book; (3) the young or unknown author was unable to compete with authors of established reputations; (4) a few favored publishers were receiving club's business and would force smaller and newer firms out of business; (5) retail book stores were losing sales because club members were paying less than retail prices; and (6) the book clubs were lowering the public taste. Time has weakened many of these arguments and the fears have proved groundless. But the final charge relative to the lowering of public taste still remains current and debatable. The criticism on this point has been bitter and is one of great interest to the librarian. For this reason the purpose of this paper is to try to adjudge the validity of that contention by examining and analyzing the selections of one of the clubs for a limited period in order to see the quality of the selections as evidenced by the evaluations of critics, both at the time of the publications of the books and at the present time. / Typescript. / "August, 1950." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Robert G. Clapp, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 27-29).

The phenomenal rise in the number of book clubs in the United States in the past twenty-five years has resulted in much being written and said on the subject of their value. The success of these clubs has raised fears in the minds of some people that books may soon be tailored less to art than to the requirements of the clubs' mass audience. The success that the clubs have had in getting the American people to buy books when the booksellers and others have failed, can probably be attributed to one key word that is found in the publicity of all the clubs: "free." A controversy about the use of the word "free" has been raging for the last few years between the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Federal Trade Commission. The Commissioners were unable to agree with the Book-of-the-Month Club's contention that statements contained in the advertisements, disclosing those things which the customer must do in order to receive the so-called "free" books, "neutralize the probability or possibility of deception." The purpose of this paper is not, however, to discuss the controversy of the Book-of-the-Month Club versus the Federal Trade Commission, or to be concerned with the free or bonus aspect of any club's promotional endeavors. Its purpose is to consider whether or not books so obtained are worth having, be they "free," bonus, or priced, and whether or not they are creditable selections. In considering the question of dividend books it obviously would be desirable to evaluate the books distributed by all book clubs, but this would not be a project with a range of accomplishment within the scope of this paper. It was, therefore, decided to take as a specimen the divident books of one such club and to attempt to adjudge on the basis of critical opinion their merits. / Typescript. / "August, 1952." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Robert G. Clapp, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-47).