The Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing

Celeste-Marie Bernier; Judie Newman; Matthew Pethers

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2016

The Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing

Celeste-Marie Bernier , Judie Newman and Matthew Pethers

In the series Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748692934

Overview
Contents

About this book

Provides a wide-ranging entry point and intervention into scholarship on nineteenth-century American letter-writing

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.

Key Features

Draws 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 contexts
Methodologically expansive, intellectually interrogative chapters based on original research by leading academics
Offers 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

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Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Prologue: Networks of Nineteenth-Century Letter-Writing Elizabeth Hewitt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Introduction: Epistolary Studies and Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing Celeste-Marie Bernier, Judie Newman and Matthew Pethers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
Part I: Material, Social, and Institutional Contexts
1. From Mind to Hand: Paper, Pens, and the Materiality of Letter-Writing Graham Thompson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
2. The Business of Letter-Writing Michael Zakim Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
3. Name and Address: Letters and Mass Mailing in Nineteenth-Century America David M. Henkin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
4. Paper Evidence: Handwriting, Print, Letters, and the Law Christopher A. Hunter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
5. Nineteenth-Century American Science and the Decline of Letters Robin Vandome Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
6. The Means and the End: Letters and the Work of History Alea Henle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
7. Letters, Telegrams, News Richard R. John Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
8. Dead Letters and the Secret Life of the State in Nineteenth-Century Matthew Pethers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	136
9. The Spider and the Dumpling: Threatening Letters in Nineteenth-Century America Leon Jackson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
Part II: Travel, Migration, and Dislocation
10. Longing in Long-Distance Letters: The Nineteenth Century and Now William Merrill Decker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
11. Working Away, Writing Home David M. Stewart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
12. Letters from America: Themes and Methods in the Study of Irish Emigrant Correspondence Emma Moreton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	198
13. The Usual Problems: Sickness, Distance, and Failure to Acculturate in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Emigrant Letters Janet Floyd Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	216
14. Indigenous Epistolarity in the Nineteenth Century Phillip H. Round Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	230
15. Dueling Epistles: Enslaved Letter-Writers and the Discourse of (Dis)Honor Ben Schiller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
16. Home and Belonging in the Letters of Sarah Hicks Williams Rebecca J. Fraser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	258
17. ‘An Oblique Place’: Letters in the Civil War Rebecca Weir Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
18. Social Action in Cross-Regional Letter-Writing: Ednah Cheney’s Correspondence with Postbellum Teachers in the U.S. South Sarah R. Robbins Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Part III: Politics, Reform, and Intellectual Life
19. Founding Friendship: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the American Experiment in Republican Government, 1812–26 Peter S. Onuf Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
20. Corresponding Natures: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Letters David Greenham Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
21. ‘This Epistolary Medium’: Friendship and Civil Society in Margaret Fuller’s Private Letters Magdalena Nerio Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	332
22. ‘Will You live?’: Thoreau’s Philosophical Letters Michael Jonik Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	347
23. ‘Frederick Douglass, the Freeman’ and ‘Frederick Bailey, the Slave’: Private versus Public Acts and Arts of Letter-Writing in Frederick Douglass’s Pre-Civil-War Correspondence Celeste-Marie Bernier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	362
24. Old Master Letters and Letters from the Old World: Julia Griffi ths and the Uses of Correspondence in Frederick Douglass’s Newspapers Sarah Meer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	377
25. Letters from ‘Linda Brent’: Harriet Jacobs and the Work of Emancipation Fionnghuala Sweeney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	391
26. Abraham Lincoln: The Man through His Letters Robert Bray Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	405
27. Between Science and Aesthetics: The Letters of William James Martin Halliwell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	419
28. ‘My Dear Dr.’: American Women and Nineteenth-Century Scientifi c Correspondence Tina Gianquitto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	435
29. ‘A Chain of Correspondence’: Social Activism and Civic Values in the Letters of Lydia Sigourney Elizabeth A. Petrino Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	450
30. A Fighting Platform: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Epistles Judith A. Allen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	465
31. ‘The Stamp of Truth’: Historiographical Dissent and Its Limits in the Letters of Jared Sparks Eileen Ka-May Cheng Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	481
32. Defenses and Masks and Poses in Henry Adams’ Letters John C. Orr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	496
Part IV: Literary Culture
33. The Letters of Charles Brockden Brown: Epistolary Performance and New Paths for Scholarship Philip Barnard Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	511
34. Publishing and Public Affairs in the Correspondence of James Fenimore Cooper Lance Schachterle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	525
35. The Transatlantic Village: The Rise and Fall of the Epistolary Friendship of Catharine Maria Sedgwick and Mary Russell Mitford Melissa J. Homestead Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	538
36. The Literary Professional and the Country Gentleman: The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe and Philip Pendleton Cooke Kevin J. Hayes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	554
37. Melville’s Flummery Wyn Kelley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	568
38. The Epistolary Romance and Rivalry of Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne Patricia Dunlavy Valenti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	582
39. Co-Responding with Walt Whitman Ed Folsom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	596
40. ‘Rare Sparkles of Light’: Intimacy and Distance in Emily Dickinson’s Letters to Thomas Wentworth Higginson Linda Freedman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	612
41. ‘Soul Friends’: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lady Byron in Correspondence Beth L. Lueck Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	627
42. Louisa May Alcott’s Family Post Box Judie Newman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	642
43. Profanities, Indecencies, and Theologies: Mark Twain’s Letters to Joseph Twichell, William Dean Howells, and Henry Rogers Peter Messent Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	655
44. Charles W. Chesnutt’s Letters: ‘The Vaguely Defi ned Line Where Races Meet’ Maria Orban Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	669
45. Sarah Orne Jewett’s Foreign Correspondence Mark Storey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	682
46. ‘Too Intimate to Publish, Too Rare to Suppress’: Henry James in His Letters Michael Anesko Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	696
47. ‘Ill Correspondent’: Stephen Crane’s Trouble with Letters John Fagg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	709
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	725
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	733

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 752
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: February 15, 2016
ISBN: 9780748692934