Carnival on the Page: Popular Print Media in Antebellum America

by Isabelle Lehuu

Overview

In the decades before the Civil War, American society witnessed the emergence of a new form of print culture, as penny papers, mammoth weeklies, giftbooks, fashion magazines, and other ephemeral printed materials brought exuberance and theatricality to public culture and made the practice of reading more controversial. For a short yet pivotal period, argues Isabelle Lehuu, the world of print was turned upside down.

Unlike the printed works of the eighteenth century, produced to educate and refine, the new media aimed to entertain a widening yet diversified public of men and women. As they gained popularity among American readers, these new print forms provoked fierce reactions from cultural arbiters who considered them transgressive. No longer the manly art of intellectual pursuit, reading took on new meaning; reading for pleasure became an act with the power to silently disrupt the social order.

Neither just an epilogue to an earlier age of scarce books and genteel culture nor merely a prologue to the late nineteenth century and its mass culture and commercial literature, the antebellum era marked a significant passage in the history of books and reading in the United States, Lehuu argues.

Originally published 2000.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition — UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807848326
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/13/2000
Edition description:	1
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Isabelle Lehuu is associate professor of history at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Elusive Reading Revolution
2. Little Sheets of News and Varieties: The Penny Wonder in New York City
3. Mammoths and Extras: Staging a Spectacle in Print
4. Leaflets of Memory: Giftbooks and the Economy of the Gaze
5. The "Lady's Book" and the Female Vernacular in Print Culture
6. A Useful Recreation: Advice on Reading in the Age of Abundance
Conclusion
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Illustrations

The Newsboy, engraved by Richard W. Dodson after a painting by Henry Inman, in The Gift (1843)
Title page, The Life of Helen Jewett, by George Wilkes (1849)
Murder of Miss Mary Rogers, frontispiece in A Confession of the Awful and Bloody Transactions in the Life of Charles Wallace (1851)
Masthead ornament, Boston Notion, February 1840
Our Place of Business—A Section of State Street, in Boston, engraving in Universal Yankee Nation—Mammoth Quarto, January 1842
The Mother, engraved by Seth Wells Cheney after a painting by Washington Allston, in The Token (1837)
Childhood, engraved by John Cheney after a painting by Thomas Sully, in The Gift (1840)
Emblematical title page, after Parmigiano, in The Token (1828)
Beatrice, engraved by John Cheney after a painting by Daniel Huntington, frontispiece in The Gift (1844)
The Valentine, engraved by James B. Longacre after a painting by Washington Allston, in The Atlantic Souvenir (1828)
Banknotes featuring feminine emblematic images
Fashion plate [untitled], Godey's Lady's Book, July 1845
The Coquette, Godey's Lady's Book, March 1851
A Domestic Scene, Godey's Lady's Book, August 1845
Maternal Instruction, Godey's Lady's Book, March 1845
Infancy, Godey's Lady's Book, February 1845
I. Maccabees, in Harper's Illuminated and New Pictorial Bible (1843-46)

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Carnival on the Page draws on a rich palette of popular print sources for a thought-provoking portrait of antebellum culture that will be of interest to historians of the book, cultural critics, and literary scholars alike.—Enterprise & Society



[An] informed, thoughtful study of American antebellum print culture.—American Historical Review



Through this framework, Lehuu offers a radically different view of American print culture between the 1830s and the 1850s. . . . In addition to offering provocative readings of antebellum print material, Carnival on the Page makes an important methodological contribution to history of the book scholarship.—SHARP News



This book, which stresses cultural forms rather than political or social meanings and their implications, covers a range of literary forms, both mainstream and ephemeral.—Journal of American History



The strength of the book lies in the convincing case made by Lehuu that antebellum print culture needs to be studied carefully in its own right rather than as a prelude to the events of the second half of the nineteenth century.—The Journal of the Early Republic



This is a well-researched and produced book, appropriately supplied with a large number of illustrations, which makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how American culture in the middle of the nineteenth century was intricately embroiled with a world of commercial exchange.—Times Literary Supplement



In a discerning analysis of textual and cultural practices, Isabelle Lehuu maps the contested terrain of print of the early nineteenth century. Offering a newly configured reading public a spectacle of words and images, antebellum America's sensational newspapers, mammoth weeklies, and fashion magazines challenged social elitism and older norms of morality. The emergence of this radically new media and its lasting impact on the traditional authority of print has much to tell readers who are today experiencing another revolution in the word.—Mary Kelley, Dartmouth College

Editorial Reviews

"Carnival on the Page draws on a rich palette of popular print sources for a thought-provoking portrait of antebellum culture that will be of interest to historians of the book, cultural critics, and literary scholars alike."—Enterprise & Society

"[An] informed, thoughtful study of American antebellum print culture."—American Historical Review

"Through this framework, Lehuu offers a radically different view of American print culture between the 1830s and the 1850s. . . . In addition to offering provocative readings of antebellum print material, Carnival on the Page makes an important methodological contribution to history of the book scholarship."—SHARP News

"This book, which stresses cultural forms rather than political or social meanings and their implications, covers a range of literary forms, both mainstream and ephemeral."—Journal of American History

"The strength of the book lies in the convincing case made by Lehuu that antebellum print culture needs to be studied carefully in its own right rather than as a prelude to the events of the second half of the nineteenth century."—The Journal of the Early Republic

From the Publisher

This is a well-researched and produced book, appropriately supplied with a large number of illustrations, which makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how American culture in the middle of the nineteenth century was intricately embroiled with a world of commercial exchange.

Times Literary Supplement