The Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-century American Letters and Letter-writing / edited by Celeste-Marie Bernier, Judie Newman, and Matthew Pethers.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bernier, Celeste-Marie, editor.

Newman, Judie, editor.

Pethers, Matthew, editor.

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Letter writing--United States--History--19th century.

Letter writing.

American letters--History and criticism.

American letters.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

viii, 744 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2016]

Summary:

This comprehensive study by leading scholars in an important new field - the history of letters and letter writing - is essential reading for anyone interested in nineteenth-century American politics, history or literature. Because of its mass literacy, population mobility, and extensive postal system, nineteenth-century America is a crucial site for the exploration of letters and their meanings, whether they be written by presidents and statesmen, scientists and philosophers, novelists and poets, feminists and reformers, immigrants, Native Americans, or African Americans. This book breaks new ground by mapping the voluminous correspondence of these figures and other important American writers and thinkers. Rather than treating the letter as a spontaneous private document, the contributors understand it as a self-conscious artefact, circulating between friends and strangers and across multiple genres in ways that both make and break social ties. Methodologically expansive, with intellectually interrogative chapters based on original research by leading academics, this book offers new insight into the lives and careers of Louisa May Alcott, Charles Brockden Brown, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglas, Margaret Fuller, Henry James, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Edgar Allan Poe, among many others. Book jacket.

Contents:

Material, social, and institutional contexts

Politics, reform, and intellectual life

Literary culture.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

9780748692927

0748692924

OCLC:

922457617

Publisher Number:

99967054295