The locomotive and the tree: industrial Pittsburgh's late nineteenth-century literary culture

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brianne Jaquette
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Carnegie Museum ◽  
Regional Literature ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Nineteenth Century American Literature ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
To Come

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] In The Locomotive and the Tree, I challenge the popular myth that the city of Pittsburgh was devoid of literary culture prior to the construction of the Carnegie museum, library, and concert hall in 1895. Pittsburgh, in fact, had a robust and thriving culture in general and specifically a literary scene that was rooted in newspaper production and was invested in the industrial aspects of the city�s growth. Much of the literary material coming from Pittsburgh was nonfiction or poetry, and it was in these forms that writers in Pittsburgh were able to come to terms with the changes taking place in a rapidly industrializing city. In contrast to scholarship that has emphasized the role of regional literature in this time period, my project uses periodical and print culture studies to analyze the localized literary culture of Pittsburgh. Instead of looking broadly at national literary culture that was disseminated from the East Coast outward, I argue for the need for research that broadens the scope of late-nineteenth century American literature by examining smaller networks of print.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 317-322
Author(s):  
William L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Slave Narratives ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Nineteenth Century American Literature ◽  
Full Diversity ◽  
Large Numbers

The epilogue notes that kinship, privilege, occupation, intragroup status, and social mobility affected crucial transitions in self-awareness as well as class awareness among the narrators. Growing self-respect kindled in many narrators a desire for a future that coalesced around an imagined free self. Narrating this process of inner growth individualized and liberated African American personhood in mid-century literature. Slave narratives from this generation created the most sophisticated commentary on caste and class in the South to be found in nineteenth-century American literature. In the late nineteenth century, former slaves continued to publish autobiographies in large numbers. Their experiences in slavery and perspectives on it were often very different from those of the antebellum narrators. Without taking into account the slave narratives published between 1865 and 1901, our comprehension of slavery and the full diversity of African American self-portraiture in the slave narrative will remain limited and partial.

Brown’s Literary Afterlife

2019 ◽  
pp. 507-521
Author(s):  
Ezra Tawil
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Return Trip ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
At Home

Charles Brockden Brown’s stature among elite writers in English during the Romantic era was significant from his death in 1810 until the late nineteenth century, though it was initially far more robust abroad than at home. In the United States during the first two decades after Brown’s death, his work tended to be treated with a certain critical condescension or outright neglect. Meanwhile, his major novels saw several reissues in England before 1820, during which time they drew the fascination and praise of now-canonical authors. In the end, with this mark made on transatlantic literary culture, an enriched understanding of Brown and his literary importance made the return trip, resulting in Brown’s elevated stature among later generations of American writers. This chapter moves back and forth across the Atlantic to reimagine the circulation of ideas, influences, and aesthetic norms that first framed Brown’s work for a transatlantic readership.

All politics are global: nineteenth-century New York history in its own world wide web

Urban History ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-351
Author(s):  
JONATHAN SOFFER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
World Wide Web ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
World Power ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
To Come

One of my colleagues likes to say that if a subject was worth one book, it was worth more than one. A comparison of two books on the development of New York City's manufacturing, commercial and financial elite demon-strates how differences in theoretical approaches, research materials and literary form can lead in significantly different directions. Beckert depicts the rise of the bourgeois class in the late nineteenth century with touches of tragedy and irony. Kessner's capitalists, while flawed, particularly in their mistreatment of labour, tend to come across as heroes who make America a dominant world power.

Cultural Divergence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Latin American Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Imagination ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter offers a periodization of the literatures of the Americas from the late nineteenth century through the postwar period. After acknowledging the emergence of a brief “transamerican literary imagination” forged in the early nineteenth century, I chart the gradual breakdown of this shared literary imagination in the second half of the nineteenth century and the concomitant rise of two distinct modes of literary production in the hemisphere: the US literature of experience and the Latin American literature of the reader. I track the emergence of these systems: in the United States, through the mid-nineteenth-century “American Renaissance,” the late nineteenth-century “age of realism,” the interwar “modernist” period, and the “postmodern” era of the second half of the century; in Latin America, through the modernismo of the turn of the twentieth century, the vanguardia movement of the 1920s and early 1930s, and the boom decades of the 1960s and 1970s.

Collectors and Entrepreneurs: Hatcher, Wortman, and the Structure of American Vertebrate Paleontology Circa 1900

1990 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Rainger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Vertebrate Paleontology ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Carnegie Museum ◽  
Peabody Museum ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Henry Fairfield Osborn

John Bell Hatcher (1861-1904) and Jacob L. Wortman (1856-1926) were two of the most prominent figures in late nineteenth-century American vertebrate paleontology. Working at leading centers for the science, including Yale's Peabody Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, each was responsible for significant discoveries of fossil vertebrates and notable contributions to taxonomy and biostratigraphy. Yet both had itinerant and, by their own admissions, highly frustrating careers. Traditionally their problems have been explained in terms of personality, as a result of their sensitive, volatile temperaments. Yet their careers and difficulties also reflect the structure of American vertebrate paleontology at the time, a discipline centered in museums and under the direction of wealthy, powerful entrepreneurs. Men such as Othniel Charles Marsh and Henry Fairfield Osborn financed and helped to promote work in vertebrate paleontology, but the context within which such work was conducted also limited opportunities for Hatcher, Wortman, and others.

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