1. Introduction: Literary Advice from Quill to Keyboard, Anneleen Masschelein -- 2. Learning Fiction by Subscription: The Art and Business of Literary Advice 1884-1895, John Caughey -- 3. “You Will Be Surprised that Fiction Has Become an Art”: The Language of Craft and the Legacy of Henry James, Mary Stewart Atwell -- 4. “Your Successful Man of Letters is Your Successful Tradesman”: Fiction and the Marketplace in the British Author’s Guides of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, Paul Vlitos -- 5. ‘Do You Use a Pencil or a Pen?’: Author Interviews as Literary Advice, Rebecca Roach -- 6. “Stand out from the Crowd!”: Literary Advice in Online Writing Communities, Bronwen Thomas -- 7. Tools for Shaping Stories? Visual Plot Models in a Sample of Anglo-American Advice Handbooks, Liorah Hoek -- 8. The “Ready-Made-Writer” in a Selection of Contemporary Francophone Literary Advice Manuals, Françoise Grauby -- 9. Taking Self-help Books Seriously: The Informal Aesthetic Education of Writers, Alexandria Peary -- 10. A Pulse Before Shelf Life: Literary Advice on Notebook-writing as Event, Arne Vanraes -- 11. ‘Writing by Prescription’: Creative Writing as Therapy and Personal Development, Leni Van Goidsenhoven and Anneleen Masschelein -- 12. Reproduction as Literary Production: Self-expression and the Index in Kenneth Goldsmith’s Uncreative Writing, Ioannis Tsitsovits -- 13. Creative Writing Crosses the Atlantic: An Attempt at Creating a Minor French Literature, Gert-Jan Meyntjens -- 14. “Mostrar, no decir”: The Influence of and Resistance Against Workshop Poetics in the Hispanic Literary Field, Andrés Franco Harnache -- 15. Work and Writing Life: Shifts in the Relationship between ‘Work’ and ‘The Work’ in Twenty-First Century Literary Advice Memoirs, Elizabeth Kovach -- 16. “If You Can Read, You Can Write, Or Can You, Really?, Jim Collins.  .

Open Access

This open access collection of essays examines the literary advice industry since its emergence in Anglo-American literary culture in the mid-nineteenth century within the context of the professionalization of the literary field and the continued debate on creative writing as art and craft. Often dismissed as commercial and stereotypical by authors and specialists alike, literary advice has nonetheless remained a flourishing business, embodying the unquestioned values of a literary system, but also functioning as a sign of a literary system in transition. Exploring the rise of new online amateur writing cultures in the twenty-first century, this collection of essays considers how literary advice proliferates globally, leading to new forms and genres.