Saturday, October 29, 2016

Missing Ralph Keeler: Comparative American Studies


Many moons ago I came across a couple of oblique references to Ralph Keeler while researching travel accounts of the Mississippi River in the wake of the Civil War. He quickly proved to be too intriguing to ignore. After a paper at BAAS 2012 and a lot of digging around, I managed to piece together an account of his career and, in particular, his very significant literary friendships with writers like Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich that has a lot to tell us about the literary world in the decade after the war. "Missing Ralph Keeler: Bohemians, Brahmins and Literary Friendships in the Gilded Age" has just been published in Comparative American Studies, 14:2 (2016), 1-23. It's available here, for those with access. And for a limited time, even those without a subscription should be able to read it here. I hope this lays his ghost to rest!

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