Authors of their lives : the personal correspondence of British immigrants to North America in the nineteenth century / David A. Gerber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gerber, David A., 1944-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

British Americans--Correspondence.

British Americans.

British--Canada--Correspondence.

British.

Immigrants--United States--Correspondence.

Immigrants.

Immigrants--Canada--Correspondence.

Letter writing--History--19th century.

Letter writing.

Transnationalism--History--19th century--Sources.

Transnationalism.

Immigrants' writings, American.

United States--Emigration and immigration--History--19th century--Sources.

United States.

Canada--Emigration and immigration--History--19th century--Sources.

Canada.

Great Britain--Emigration and immigration--History--19th century--Sources.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (432 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

2008 United States Postal System's Rita Lloyd Moroney Award. In the era before airplanes and e-mail, how did immigrants keep in touch with loved ones in their homelands, as well as preserve links with pasts that were rooted in places from which they voluntarily left? Regardless of literacy level, they wrote letters, explains David A. Gerber in this path-breaking study of British immigrants to the U.S. and Canada who wrote and received letters during the nineteenth century. Scholars have long used immigrant letters as a lens to examine the experiences of immigrant groups and the communities the

Contents:

Traditions of inquiry

Forming selves in letters

Writing with a purpose : immigrant epistolarity and the culture of emigration

Using postal systems : transnational networks on the edge of modernity

Establishing voice, theme, and rhythm

When correspondence wanes

Thomas Spencer Niblock : a dialogue of respectability and failure

Catherine Grayston Bond : letter-writing as the practice of existential accounting

Mary Ann Wodrow Archbald : longing for her "little isle" from a farm in central New York

Dr. Thomas Steel : the difficulties of achieving the reunited family.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780814732724

0814732720

9780814733219

0814733212

9781429414135

1429414138

OCLC:

779828101