This is the final installment of the How NOT TO Write Your Second Book roundtable. Catherine E. Kelly is a Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma and editor of the Journal of the Early Republic. Her books include In the New England Fashion: Reshaping Women’s Lives in the Nineteenth Century (Cornell UP) and Republic of Taste: Art, Politics, and Everyday Life in Early America (UPenn Press).

Let me begin with a cautionary tale:

I had just returned to the University of Oklahoma after an extended research trip for the project that would eventually become my second book, Republic of Taste.  I was a very recent hire; I’d only been on campus for a semester before leaving to spend six months back east, including a four-month fellowship at Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.  My Chair invited me to his office to tell him how the trip had gone and what I had to show for it. Continue reading →