A Literate South: Reading Before Emancipation
Beth Barton Schweiger
(Author)
Description
Questioning the stereotype that nineteenth-century rural southern tradition was oral versus written, Schweiger sheds light on literature's importance in preserving southern tradition, developing southern vernacular, and forming a cultural identity. Schweiger explains how literacy's supposed incompatibility with slavery hid readers in the Old South from their society and beyond.Product Details
Price
$42.00
Publisher
Yale University Press
Publish Date
June 25, 2019
Pages
288
Dimensions
6.1 X 1.1 X 9.3 inches | 1.25 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780300112535
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Beth Barton Schweiger taught for fifteen years at the University of Arkansas. She is the author of The Gospel Working Up and editor of Religion in the American South.
Reviews
"Exhaustively researched and beautifully presented, A Literate South reveals a rural South populated by avid and enterprising consumers--both free and enslaved--and a world awash in cheap print. . . . A Literate South will be invaluable to historians of the book, but scholars of southern studies, education, and religion will also find much here that is provocative and even revelatory."--C. Hutchison, University of Texas at Austin
"A striking new interpretation of the antebellum American South. This book is a major contribution to the literary and cultural history of the American South, the history of the book and print culture, women's history, nineteenth-century American history, and African American history."--Lloyd Pratt, University of Oxford
"Beth Barton Schweiger's highly imaginative survey of antebellum print culture in the Virginia and North Carolina backcountry uncovers a rich world of avid readers who helped define themselves and their own version of modernity at a time when literacy served as a potent weapon in the slavery/antislavery debate."--Susan V. Donaldson, College of William and Mary
"Schweiger makes a persuasive case for the circulation and consumption of print in the rural antebellum South. In doing so, she offers an innovative take on what people do with print."--Sarah Gardner, Mercer University
"A striking new interpretation of the antebellum American South. This book is a major contribution to the literary and cultural history of the American South, the history of the book and print culture, women's history, nineteenth-century American history, and African American history."--Lloyd Pratt, University of Oxford
"Beth Barton Schweiger's highly imaginative survey of antebellum print culture in the Virginia and North Carolina backcountry uncovers a rich world of avid readers who helped define themselves and their own version of modernity at a time when literacy served as a potent weapon in the slavery/antislavery debate."--Susan V. Donaldson, College of William and Mary
"Schweiger makes a persuasive case for the circulation and consumption of print in the rural antebellum South. In doing so, she offers an innovative take on what people do with print."--Sarah Gardner, Mercer University
