Christmas past : an anthology of seasonal stories from nineteenth-century America / edited by Thomas Ruys Smith.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Smith, Thomas Ruys, 1979- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christmas stories, American.

Christmas--Literary collections.

Christmas.

History.

American prose literature.

United States.

American prose literature--19th century.

Christmas in literature.

Christmas--United States--History--19th century.

Genre:

Literary collections.

History.

Fiction.

Literature.

Physical Description:

lxvi, 237 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2021]

Summary:

"As the modern celebration of Christmas took shape across the nineteenth century, American writers gave it new meaning in the pages of countless books and magazines. Now, for the first time, this rich anthology brings together some of the most significant of those seasonal stories to retell a forgotten tale of Christmases past. From the authors who helped define a national literary culture, to the popular sentimentalists who negotiated Christmas's position at the center of family life, to the realists who looked to reshape American letters in the wake of the Civil War, and beyond: all varieties of American writers turned to Christmas as an inevitable and potent subject during this deeply formative period in the history of American literature. Editor Thomas Ruys Smith brings together a diverse range of their voices to showcase the many ways in which Christmas was imagined across the nineteenth century, offering images that echo down to the present day. Readers looking for antiquarian pleasures beyond Dickens will find much to enjoy. But these carefully curated stories also provide a shock of recognition, or perhaps reassurance, that many of the concerns and tensions that animate the festive season today were equally felt by those living in the nineteenth century. As these stories make clear, then as now, people lamented the commercialization of the season, agonized about selecting presents for loved ones, argued about its spiritual significance, politicized the holidays, and used this time to highlight inequities that seemed even more stark when displayed against a festive backdrop. The introduction that frames the anthology provides a new literary history of Christmas, contextualizing the selections and making clear the links both between them and to the wider trajectory of American literature"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Old Christmas, new Christmas

Christmas (1819) / Washington Irving

Christmas from The pearl, or, Affection's gift (1829)

Excerpt from Retrospect of Western travel (1938) / Harriet Martineau

Sentiment, slavery, and war at Christmas

Christmas, or, The good fairy (1850) / Harriet Beecher Stowe

Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas! (1853) / Fanny Fern

Christmas in Slavery

Excerpt from Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass (1845) / Frederick Douglass

Excerpt from Twelve years a slave (1853) / Solomon Northup

Christmas festivities (1863) / Harriet Jacobs

A hospital Christmas (1864) / Louisa May Alcott

Excerpt from Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1881) / Margaret Sidney

Christmas realities

The promise of the dawn: a Christmas story (1863) / Rebecca Harding Davis

How Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar (1873) / Bret Harte

An English New Year (January 1879) / Henry James

Christmas every day (1892) / William Dean Howells

Christmas Jenny (1891) / Mary Wilkins Freeman

Little Miss Sophie (1899) / Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Wrestling with the reason for the season

Excerpt from Ben Hur: a tale of the Christ (1880) / Lew Wallace

Miracle joyeux (1898) / Frank Norris

A Christmas sermon (1891) and What I want for Christmas (1897) / Robert G. Ingersoll

Happy Christmas to all?

Excerpt from The ghost dance war (1890) / Charles Alexander Eastman

Rabbi Eliezer's Christmas (1899) / Abraham Cahan

General Washington: a Christmas story (1900) / Pauline Hopkins

Merry Christmas in the tenements (1897) / Jacob A. Riis.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Other Format:

Online version: Christmas past

ISBN:

9780807176085

0807176087

OCLC:

1245961079