Letters And Cultural Transformations In The United States 1760 1860

This volume illustrates the significance of epistolarity as a literary phenomenon intricately interwoven with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultural developments. Rejecting the common categorization of letters as primarily private documents, this collection of essays demonstrates the genre's persistent public engagements with changing cultural dynamics of the revolutionary, early republican, and antebellum eras. Sections of the collection treat letters' implication in transatlanticism, authorship, and reform movements as well as the politics and practices of editing letters. The wide range of authors considered include Mercy Otis Warren, Charles Brockden Brown, members of the Emerson and Peabody families, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Stoddard, Catherine Brown, John Brown, and Harriet Jacobs. The volume is particularly relevant for researchers in U.S. literature and history, as well as women's writing and periodical studies. This dynamic collection offers scholars an exemplary template of new approaches for exploring an understudied yet critically important literary genre.

This volume illustrates the significance of epistolarity as a literary phenomenon intricately interwoven with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultural developments. Rejecting the common categorization of letters as primarily private documents, this collection of essays demonstrates the genre's persistent public engagements with changing cultural dynamics of the revolutionary, early republican, and antebellum eras. Sections of the collection treat letters' implication in transatlanticism, authorship, and reform movements as well as the politics and practices of editing letters. The wide range of authors considered include Mercy Otis Warren, Charles Brockden Brown, members of the Emerson and Peabody families, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Stoddard, Catherine Brown, John Brown, and Harriet Jacobs. The volume is particularly relevant for researchers in U.S. literature and history, as well as women's writing and periodical studies. This dynamic collection offers scholars an exemplary template of new approaches for exploring an understudied yet critically important literary genre.

Provides a wide-ranging entry point and intervention into scholarship on nineteenth-century American letter-writingThis 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.Key FeaturesDraws together different emphases on the intellectual, literary and social uses of letter writing Provides students and researchers with a means to situate letters in their wider theoretical and historical contextsMethodologically expansive, intellectually interrogative chapters based on original research by leading academicsOffers new insights into the lives and careers of Louisa May Alcott, Charles Brockden Brown, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, Henry James, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Edgar Allan Poe, among many others

The recently developed field of transatlantic literary studies has encouraged scholars to move beyond national literatures towards an examination of communications between Britain and the Americas. The true extent and importance of these material and literary exchanges is only just beginning to be discovered. This collection of original essays explores the transatlantic literary imagination during the key period from 1660 to 1830: from the colonization of the Americas to the formative decades following political separation between the nations. Contributions from leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic bring a variety of approaches and methods to bear on both familiar and undiscovered texts. Revealing how literary genres were borrowed and readapted to a different context, the volume offers an index of the larger literary influences going backwards and forwards across the ocean.

A comprehensive, chronological overview of American literature in three scholarly and authoritative volumes A Companion to American Literature traces the history and development of American literature from its early origins in Native American oral tradition to 21st century digital literature. This comprehensive three-volume set brings together contributions from a diverse international team of accomplished young scholars and established figures in the field. Contributors explore a broad range of topics in historical, cultural, political, geographic, and technological contexts, engaging the work of both well-known and non-canonical writers of every period. Volume One is an inclusive and geographically expansive examination of early American literature, applying a range of cultural and historical approaches and theoretical models to a dramatically expanded canon of texts. Volume Two covers American literature between 1820 and 1914, focusing on the development of print culture and the literary marketplace, the emergence of various literary movements, and the impact of social and historical events on writers and writings of the period. Spanning the 20th and early 21st centuries, Volume Three studies traditional areas of American literature as well as the literature from previously marginalized groups and contemporary writers often overlooked by scholars. This inclusive and comprehensive study of American literature: Examines the influences of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and disability on American literature Discusses the role of technology in book production and circulation, the rise of literacy, and changing reading practices and literary forms Explores a wide range of writings in multiple genres, including novels, short stories, dramas, and a variety of poetic forms, as well as autobiographies, essays, lectures, diaries, journals, letters, sermons, histories, and graphic narratives. Provides a thematic index that groups chapters by contexts and illustrates their links across different traditional chronological boundaries A Companion to American Literature is a valuable resource for students coming to the subject for the first time or preparing for field examinations, instructors in American literature courses, and scholars with more specialized interests in specific authors, genres, movements, or periods.