Wit and Wisdom
eBook - ePub

Wit and Wisdom

The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages

  1. 272 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Wit and Wisdom

The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages

About this book

The lyceum movement gained momentum in the decades preceding the Civil War, presenting members with the opportunity to participate in literary life and engage with the issues of the day. While urban lyceums played host to a who's who of nineteenth-century intellectual life, literary societies also cropped up in thousands of villages across the nation, acting as influential sites of learning, creativity, and community engagement. In rural New England, ordinary men and women, farmers and intelligentsia, selectmen and schoolchildren came together to write and perform poetry and witty parodies and debate a wide range of topics, from women's rights and temperance to slavery, migration, and more.

Wit and Wisdom takes readers inside this long-forgotten tradition, providing new access to the vibrant voices, surprising talents, and understated humor on display on many a cold winter's night. Having uncovered dozens of handwritten newspapers produced by village lyceums across Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, Joan Newlon Radner proves that these close-knit groups offered a vital expression of the beliefs, ambitions, and resilience of rural New Englanders.

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Yes, you can access Wit and Wisdom by Joan Newlon Radner in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover 
  2. Half Title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Author’s Note
  8. Prologue: The Treasure in the Attic
  9. Introduction
  10. Chapter 1: “Report of last Lyceum”: Discovering a Forgotten Institution
  11. Chapter 2: “A crown of wisdom weave”: The Rural Lyceum Tradition
  12. Chapter 3: “The great work of self-culture”: Learning through Debate
  13. Chapter 4: “The ladies have nobly responded”: Women in the Lyceum
  14. Chapter 5: “Who will sustain the paper?”: The Work of Editing
  15. Chapter 6: “Effulgent in wisdom and sparkling with wit”: Exploring the Papers
  16. Chapter 7: “Read by so many eager subscribers”: The Press as Model
  17. Chapter 8: “The speaking eye and the listening ear”: Performing the Papers
  18. Chapter 9: “How shall we win back lost ground?”: The End of an Era
  19. Epilogue: “Coming here among strangers”
  20. Acknowledgments
  21. Appendices
  22. Notes
  23. Index
  24. Back Cover