Christmas Past: Official Announcement

 

As publication day approaches next month, here's the official announcement that will be hitting inboxes soon. 

Readex: Using Digital Newspapers for Biographical Research

 

Belatedly, my Readex article on Ralph Keeler was included in this free ebook - Using Digital Newspapers for Biographical Research, Volume 1. 

Deep Water: Review

Deep Water just got a lovely review in the Journal of American History by Gregg Andrews. Available here for those with access - some choice snippets:

 

Comparative American Studies: Following the River

I've guest edited a Special Issue of Comparative American Studies dedicated to rivers! Available here for those with institutional subscriptions. Some great work by some brilliant young scholars. Also includes my own essay on Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell's account of a summer on the Thames. That's available here.  

Christmas Past: Catalog Copy

Click to read - full catalog available here. 

Coming soon: Christmas Past: An Anthology of Seasonal Stories from Nineteenth-Century America

Coming in September from Louisiana State University Press! Already available for preorder on Amazon. Here's the official blurb:

As the modern celebration of Christmas took shape across the nineteenth century, American writers gave it new meaning in the pages of countless books and magazines. Now, for the first time, this rich anthology brings together some of the most significant of those seasonal stories to retell a forgotten tale of Christmases past.

From the authors who helped define a national literary culture, to the popular sentimentalists who negotiated Christmas’s position at the center of family life, to the realists who looked to reshape American letters in the wake of the Civil War, and beyond: all varieties of American writers turned to Christmas as an inevitable and potent subject during this deeply formative period in the history of American literature. In Christmas Past, Thomas Ruys Smith brings together a diverse range of voices to showcase the many ways in which Christmas was imagined across the nineteenth century, offering images that echo down to the present. The introduction that frames the anthology provides a new literary history of Christmas, contextualizing the selections and making clear the links both between them and to the wider trajectory of American literature.

And here is advance praise from some of the giants of Christmas commentary:

Christmas Past is an invaluable contribution to not just to the study of Christmas stories but to the history of nineteenth-century American literature. — Gerry Bowler, author of The World Encyclopedia of Christmas and Santa Claus: A Biography

Christmas Past, with its lucid introduction, is a lovely and broad-ranging collection of nineteenth-century Christmas stories that ably illuminates the ways in which literary imaginations inspired and guided the creation of the 'old-fashioned' American Christmas. — Penne L. Restad, author of Christmas in America: A History

An eclectic and engrossing group of Christmas tales, vignettes, and reflections from America's deep nineteenth-century literary well. . . . There is something for everybody in this collection. — Robert E. May, author of Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory 

An important contribution to the story of the American Christmas. Smith casts a wider net to include new and different voices from those most often contained in Christmas anthologies. — Tara Moore, author of Victorian Christmas in Print

Everyone believes that their own Christmas traditions are the 'real' ones, the ones that others can only palely imitate. Now, with Thomas Ruys Smith's Christmas Past, we can see that all Christmases are a series of overlapping circles of customs, beliefs, habits and stories. A work of scholarship, and also intensive poetry, Christmas Past gives us our own pasts back, and opens a path to exploring new futures. — Judith Flanders, author of Christmas: A Biography

More details soon!🎅

Louisiana Anthology Podcast

  

I also sat down with Bruce Magee, one of the hosts of the Louisiana Anthology Podcast, to discuss plenty of Mississippi River lore, framed around Sam Clemens's visit to Mardi Gras in 1859. It's available here in a variety of formats.

Massolit: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 

A while ago I recorded a lecture on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for Massolit - it's available here for subscribers, with a short free preview for everyone else.

Deep Water: Association of University Presses Design Selection

Some nice news in the midst of everything: Deep Water has just been selected by the Association of University Presses for its amazing design by Michelle Neustrom at Louisiana State University Press in its annual book, jacket and journal show - specifically in the Scholarly Typographic category. More info and other selections here.