Love and the working class : the inner worlds of 19th century Americans / Karen Lystra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lystra, Karen, author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Working class--United States--History--19th century.

Working class.

Love-letters--United States--History--19th century.

Love-letters.

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

Literacy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (361 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2024]

Summary:

'Love and the Working Class' takes a unique look at the emotions of hard-living, nineteenth-century Americans who were often on the cusp of literacy. These labouring folk highly valued letters and, however difficult it was, wrote to stay connected to those they loved. This book displays the personal expression of factory hands, manual labourers, peddlers, coopers, carpenters, lumbermen, miners, tanners, haulers, tailors, seamstresses, laundresses, domestics, sharecroppers, independent farmers, and common soldiers and their wives. Entering the 'anonymous corners' of these people's lives through letters, we can see their humour, grit, hope, heartache, and endurance, and grasp what they believed and felt about themselves, their kinfolk, and their friends.

Contents:

Cover

Love and the Working Class

Copyright

Contents

Introduction: Emotion and History: Working-​Class Feeling in an Age of Letters

1. "Please Excuse All Mistakes": Letter-​Writing, Shame, and Social Connection

2. Working-​Class Americans Choose a Mate: Nonromantic Courtship and Tribal Intimacy

3. The Love Continuum: Understanding Romantic and Nonromantic Attachment

4. Sex Talk, Humor, and Fear of Ridicule: Desire and Self-​Protection

5. Love to All Inquiring Friends: Sustaining Communal Ties in Nonromantic Marriage

6. Fighting to Stay Together: Unhappy Spouses and Their Struggles

7. Roses Are Red /​ Violets Are Blue: Emotional History in Rhyme

8. Imagining the Eternal Village: Death, Longing, and Loss

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Appendix A: Writing, Education, and Literacy

Appendix B: Literacy and Oral Culture

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2024.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on February 8, 2024).

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

0-19-751424-3

0-19-751425-1

0-19-751423-5

OCLC:

1420389530