Showing posts with label Advance Praise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advance Praise. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

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!🎅

Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Deep Water: More Advance Praise


One final piece of pre-publication praise for Deep Water, from Professor Sarah Churchwell, author of a number of wonderful books, most recently Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream:
“An exemplary work of American literary history, situating Mark Twain's writing about the river that so defined it within a wider understanding of how that river culture also shaped America. Comprehensively researched, sweeping in its scope, rich in its depths, Smith's book is an authoritative - likely definitive - primer for understanding what the deep waters of 'The Mississippi' meant to Twain, and still means to American culture.”
Available December 17!

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Louisiana State University Press

Friday, August 30, 2019

Deep Water: More Advance Praise



"Mark Twain knew a thing or two about the Mississippi River. So does Thomas Ruys Smith. In Deep Water, Smith intertwines the life and literature of Twain with the experiences and perspectives of many other people who lived, worked, and played along the Mississippi. Thanks to Smith, we now have a book that fully accounts for Twain’s complicated relationship with the Mississippi, a river that captured, and continues to capture, the American imagination."
—Michael Pasquier, editor of Gods of the Mississippi

"This is the story of a great American writer and a great American river, and the relationship between the two. Thomas Ruys Smith's elegantly written, deeply researched account brings us closer to Mark Twain by enriching our understanding of the river that flowed through his life and work. We see the Mississippi worlds that made Twain, and come away with immeasurably deeper insight into the worlds he made."
—Ben Tarnoff, author of The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers

"By embedding Twain's canonical work on the Mississippi River in the context of what numerous less celebrated others wrote on the same subject, Thomas Ruys Smith provides a valuable new perspective on Twain's vision, not just of the river, but of race, gender, imperialism, and national culture."
—Andrew Levy, author of Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece

Out December 17! Available for pre-order!

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Louisiana State University Press

Friday, August 09, 2019

Deep Water: Advance Praise

Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain
Some advance praise for Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain (Louisiana State University Press, coming in December) from Professor Pete Messent:

"Thomas Ruys Smith’s book will be required reading for anyone interested in Mark Twain and / or Mississippi river culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Framing both Twain and the river in new and often unexpectedly rewarding ways, it ranges widely through biography, literature, history, geopolitics, music and other forms of popular culture, issues of national and transnational identity, and much, much, more besides. An outstanding contribution to its various fields."

Available for pre-order!

Amazon UK

Amazon US