From Merrimack College and masters in phd from university of illinois at urbanachampaign. As a former magazine writer and editor her Research Interests include 19th century print culture, womens magazines and radical or alternative press. Before we begin the program i would like to extend a special welcome to anyone who will be joining virtual nhs program for the first time. If youre not familiar with the Massachusetts Historical Society with first historical site in america and had been collecting, preserving, publishing, sharing our history since 1791. We hold an amazing collection of 14 million man script pages including papers the first three president s of the United States. abim sorry, three of the first president of the United States. We are continuing to collect a today if youre interested, we are currently collecting material related to the covid19 experience. We have a special initiative designed to record peoples experiences during this unusual time and preserve a deserved sampling of firsthand accounts for future generations. In these days of social distancing we have taken to hosting virtual programs and we have online programs planned every week from now through the end of july. Even into the beginning of august. Next week we are hosting a talk by abyou can find more information on that on our website. Before we begin, we have a few quick housekeeping materials to go through. First of all, if you have a question, comment, or concern about the program or our general programs come you can contact me or our Public Programs according to an email will make it to us or you can reach us through our website. As i mentioned, we are producing all of our programs for free during covid19 period. But of course we are a nonprofit and independent nonprofit. If you have the capability and would like to support the Massachusetts Historical Society we would encourage you to do so and you knew that by visiting massachusetts. Org su pport. Just to go over the details of how we use zoom, we will have a presentation by miss harringtonlueker and then a question and answer period. There are two ways guests can ask questions the first is a fee use q a function if youre using a computer this is at the bottom of your screen you can use a tablet or cell phone it might be at the top of the screen. Essentially its the q a function and you can type a question in. Donna harringtonlueker and i will read the questions to our speaker and then she will answer them. The other way is to use the raised hands function this will allow you to indicate if youd like to ask question we will unmute people if we have time. The one thing the unmute function is if you most likely need to unmute yourself as well. Just keep that in mind. Without further ado, i am going to introduce our speaker today we are hearing from donna harringtonlueker and, donna, if youd like to turn on your camera and unmute yourself we will be off to the races. Great to see you and im now going to fade off into the digital. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you all for coming. Thank you to gavin and sarah for making this possible. Before we begin, i want to acknowledge these are such difficult times with so much at stake and so much on our minds as i worked on this lecture this presentation and the last week i must admit i found myself thinking, is this really the time to be talking about Summer Reading and summer leisure or even about 19th century publishing . But the last quarter of the 19th century the period that i focus on in my study it wasnt without its challenges. At the beginning of the period in 1877 federal troops were sent into quell a worker strike against the railroads and at the end the United States found itself in the spanishamerican war. Just jump in. I talk Summer Reading. I would like to star with blackwell. Primary abolitionist and womens right advocate. You can see a family portrait, a family photo over here on the left of the 3 of them. In the early 1870s, ellis was a teenager and she was a voracious reader. Stories turned into adventure and sensation. If you read journals of this period, they are filled with entries rushing into boston by train or streetcar and picked up the latest issue of popular ledger, popular weekly paper or she talked about stopping at the Boston Library for stacks of books that she devours one week and turns the next. A quote here from her journal, quote, change my books and got out in time for dinner she writes in july 1872. Ive adopt a very good set of books this time though ive read them all before. Among the titles that she mentions in the journal she mention it is gothic mystery called the thief and the night which she admits readily upset her nerves and Thomas Hughes at oxford which she describes as favorite. Alice took part in Summer Reading as well and thats the writing on the right. This is the family home. The stone blackwell household engaged in family reading. This was a common practice in 19th century n. The summer they did so on the widows walk. You can see it there, the home to take advantage of the cool breezes in the nearby bay. And there ellis reports the family read books Sir Walter Scott and vanity fair. They read long novels with plots which would be many summer evening and delight in the shared reading was absolutely apparent. Another quote from her journal, i chased popa about to tickle his toes. Im restrained informal given to action and adventure. Alice Summer Readings resinate with us today. Every year we are familiar with this, every year sometime around the memorial day weekend the Summer Reading season begins. Oprah makes her best pick for summer read, so does New York Times, the wall street journal and host of other media outlets. Summer is the time when we are advised to turn to lightweight paperbacks that we can stuff into a beach bag or read without worry by the pool side. Its the time where we are told to reach for the light popular novel or the actionpacked bestseller. Clyde barns, critic to New York Times wrote, in 1968, Summer Reading like the statute of liberty and motherhood is always with us. And thats still true today. The list of best summer reads continue on in this very, very fraught season. Ive just taken some screen grabs. The first one, two, three of them came from the weekend, memorial day weekend itself and the one on the bottom it was just from today, so we see here the top one is from the New York Times, the beach may be closed but the books are worth opening. The next one down refinery 29, fight for millennial young women, the 25 books youll want to read this summer. On the left its from oprah, 28 of the best beach reads of summer 2020. And then another list. This one came from todays, this afternoon boston globe online. The best books to read this summer and i might note here about the boston globe. I had chance to go quickly through it and see what they were recommending and i was really struck. At one point the New York Times was criticized for its book list that included primarily white authors, one season they were accused of having reach peak caucacity with their choices and the best choice to read this summer in the boston globe are incredibly varied and diverse. Okay, but where did this idea of Summer Reading come from . Reading is practice found to be an established part not only of literary commerce, but of American Culture as well and those are some of the questions that i begin to explore. So im a book historian and so i practice in the field that looks at the intersection of authorship, reading and publishing. History is field that concerns itself and first, but also with the cultural practices that surround books, how books are produced, how they are circulated and they are received. One summer, one june i was returning from halifax and looking for something to read on the flight home and i came across the brochure announcing the best summer reads for that season, and i found myself as a result kind of thinking of own Summer Reading rituals and the ways in which the Publishing Industry may have shaped and sustained those. So that led me to library of Brown University where i worked with the magazine called the book buyer, a magazine from charles, the story of new york city publisher, i will talk about it a little bit later, full of advertisements from other publishers, copy about the book trade was like and what people were reading and from there i moved on and i moved outward to other 19th century magazines and newspapers from across the United States. I didnt want to leave just new england. I included the africanamerican press of the period as well as number of alternative presses. After that, it was onto publishing archives and princeton and colombia onto letters and journals and to a long, long list of novels set of at summer resorts. Many written by absolutely periods famous authors, steven crane, lisa may and they all practiced summer novel at some point in their career. So what i found as a result of this, my summers were not now so idle, so what i found was very interesting chapter in the history of publishing. Summer readings to be sure in 19th century was very much a commercial construction. The idea of Summer Reading is a product that was part of the publishing, Publishing Industry really concerted efforts to redefine slow season and to capitalize on a really dramatic rise of travel, tourism and summer leisure in victorian american and gilded age but in the last quarter of 19th century it also became a well established cultural practice, performance and many of those characteristics remain with us today. Overall then, an interesting chapter in history to have book and the history of summer leisure. Now, my book is felt covered a lot of ground. I just briefly reproduced the table of contents here to give you just a little bit of a flavor of the larger argument as well. I looked at the dramatic rise of travel tourism and leisure in the period. One embraced by middle classes and increasingly uses it and the professional authors of the period indulge in summer leisure. I also look at a variety of books that were advertised as best summer reads and i look especially at the development of what i call the american summer novel. The novel that was specifically set at a summer resort. And finally, i looked at the ways in which authorship intersected with and kind of exploited this new genre and the way physical spaces shaped Summer Reading practices. I looked at resort libraries, Saratoga Springs to chairs advertised for porchside reading that had bookshelves built into the very, very wide arms. Today, though, i want to focus on one part of the books argument and that is the 19th century the role that 19th century magazine culture played in Summer Reading into practice. Im especially interested in the socalled facemaking publications and ive reproduced some covers of these here. These are the three most prominent. Atlanta monthly which was published in boston, rival in new york city, and century illustrated monthly. Now, their role is going to be very significant. These were publications that had significant degree of Cultural Authority an exemplar of yankee humanism in the kind that it featured. In this age of the magazine, these publications and others become the primary vehicle for what Jane Thompson calls the machinery of publishing and reviewing. That is the machinery that present to readers in a certain way, frames the text, establishes context for it and prepares us as readers to read it in a certain way and with a certain framework in mind. So together these and other publications, these and other magazines of this period shape the discourse on Summer Reading through their text and visual and thats what id like to explore. To give you an idea of where i want to go with this as we move ahead, its kind of in 3 parts, i want to look at early in the century. The very beginnings of a discourse on Summer Reading. I then want to move onto the complete disruption of shaped fiction that develops in the period and finally, i want to look at the publishers efforts to reframe and reclaim Summer Reading. We will see how that develops. Okay. So the first part, the very early discourse on Summer Reading. Lets just go back a bit and i have some images here. Paintings from the period. Domestic tour knicks the United States developed in the late 1700s around places like Niagara Falls seen here at the top, hudson river, tourism develops around there. By the 1 painting of horseback riding of the side of mount washington. They were in Mount Desert Island in maine, Mineral Springs in the south and host of other sites. Excuse me. Its allergy season if you can bear with me. New port, rhode island begins to take shape here as respite for the heat in the summer. I want to look at two magazines here to give you the tenure of how the discourse begins. On the left 1835 new england magazine, you can see here the opening story is on brown. 1835, article called summer philosophy and it began by invoking the political philosopher edman burke and his advice to live pleasant. Thats the theme of this article. Philosophy advise younger and less experienced travelers with ways to use their time and advised that they needed to use their time to cultivate and here is a quote, walk slow, think slow, read, dress, undress, in short live with studied and exquisite deliberation and that deliberation needed to expand to whatever reading matter the traveler chose. The number traveler, for example, was advised to avoid reading anything having to do with politics as well as anything that smacked egotism. The best articles were lord byron and lam. The reviewer wrote, quote, soda, glass of hawk, customary after dinner nap, jasmine and good girls under it. The young man who follows this advice and the article was specific about the gender of the Summer Reading would cultivate sweet serenity that was going to last until october. Putnam over here on the right, putnams in the 1850s is similarly approach. In 1853 putnams ran a review of a new poetry collection called book for seaside from the boston. Collection of poetry about works of shelley, longfellow and others and putnams was very keen on it and said it was not going to be not only summer read but permanent value. Later in 1850s putnam also recommend the work of Washington Irving for Summer Reading and describe irvine as a, quote, beautiful genius. Irvins work was series that would be quote delightful for Summer Reading. Here is first look at discourse taking place. Frames it as very, very distinctive in what it was designed to accomplish. By mid century that changed. That discourse is gone. The discourse changes and it does so in large part because really Interesting Development in the literary field and that is the wave of cheap paperback fiction that flooded the literary market after the civil war. This was unprecedented expansion of vocor victorian American Culture. This took various forms. First, in this period, this was before the passage of the International Copyright act. This wave of cheap fiction included editions of british and european fiction, so george elliot, lewis alice and wonderland, charles dickens, all of the work was not protected by copyright and in the United States picked them up and published them in cheap paper cover editions, often in libraries, sometimes multiple releasing of volume multiple times a week and cost to 10 to 20 cents a volume. Now readers probably wouldnt find theres in bookstores, the cheap paperbacks, instead they would find them at newsstands, railway kiosks and even on board trains and boys would sell snacks but also paperbound books. Book historian remarks that by 1870s virtually everyone who took a train for journey of anyone at all would have encountered a book from popular cheap library. Cheap fiction took another form as well. In stories from the socalled fiction factories these were stories that were quickly produced of questionable quality, they were long on murders and rescue and melodrama, very, very heavily formulate, real industrial commodity that flooded the market. Now, one other part of the mix of cheap fiction needs to be mentioned and that is the questionable and perceived to be very immoral french novel. Typically appearing in yellow paper covers, people talk about this throughout the period and by one of the period critics not just being sinful, all of this in the mix and you can see 3 of the cover that is would give you the flavor of this cheap fiction, so in the left, captives of the frontier, western stories were incredibly popular, they did a lot in the way of nation building and in the middle Level Library with lyndon, particularly aggressive about the absence of a copyright and then on the right, one of the most popular writers to have period libby, prolific in paper covers. Whats the relationship with Summer Reading, Summer Reading becomes part of associated with this wave of cheap fiction and, indeed, a number of publishers in the period tried to exploit that connection, wanted to take advantage of it. So here is one of them, joe monroe, new york publisher had incredibly successful series called the c5 library. Clearly pirated. The idea that you could stipit into a pocket or you can see monroe packaging differently, very decidedly for the Summer Market. We have the Seaside Library pocket edition, King Solomons wives, but then we have the postcard with the white house with the couple on the cliff and a sailboat is going by clearly evoking summer time. Demonstrates another way that they figured in this marketplace. Again, its laura gene lib libbey. Laura jean libbey, popular, novels at resorts, one at linux and Atlantic City and this one flirtations of a beauty, story start in new port, rhode island. Libbeys plots were unpredictable. The plot here is typical, pennyless young woman falls in love with very rich man in new port, she knows it wont work out because of the discrepancy. I have no reason for doing so. Here she is throwing herself and the cut line under it says im going into the bitterness of death. Im going to set you free. Well, this is early in the novel and she doesnt die and, in fact, as the story progresses she ends up in the White Mountains of new jersey where shes kidnapped by pirates and taken down the Connecticut River in very libbey fashion. This is all in about the first 60 to 70 pages. Now, more worrisome perhaps for any publisher interested in jumpstarting the Summer Season was a cultural conversation around this kind of Light Reading and more. In 1876 the reverend, prominent preture launched the Summer Season with a sermon basically condemning life at Saratoga Springs, she criticized the dancing, gossip and horse racing and all that he associated with Saratoga Springs. But he leveled some of the severe criticism in reading. He warned that the kinds of novels that people read in the summer were dangerous to immortal souls. Two quotes from the sermon and this would get repeated in the book with some regularity. Do not let the frogs and the life of corrupt Printing Press jump and crawl into your saratoga trunk or White Mountain beliefs. You have in your hands one of the paper cover romances, flirt, chapters in the book that you would not read to your children at the rate of 100 a line. I really believe theres more trash read among the intelligent classes in july and august than all the other ten months of the year. Throughout 19th century criticism of the novel in general in cheap paperback in particular was ramp it. So given this kind of cultural cross current, the period between 1870 and 1900 wasnt the most setting for birth of Summer Reading but mainstream publishers used variety of tactics. They will reclaim Summer Reading from this wave of cheap fiction. They used the variety of tactics, for example, first in their advertising they begin to put labels on everything, the best summer reads even if the books had nothing to do with the summer. They used another strategy, packaging books as part of summer Series Making them recognizable summer brand. Appleton had county library, henry leisure hours series, in the case of one newspaper a 100degree shade summer fiction series. They embraced the paperback as the perfect summer read. Here is a quote from the american book maker in place of the paper covers these are the golden days of the paperwork , heather, leather and both up right to position on sofa or lounge or in a chair, hammock or bed or stretched out on greens wood or sandy beach. Publishers worked very specifically to reframe and repackage Summer Reading, framing it as welcome escape and essential middleclass treasure. The monthly, good taste in reading, they all helped with this. When you read issues in this period you mind that in their pages summer novels begin to be described as way to fill vacant hours in resort. They were saying that number novels didnt demand too much attention but that made them Excellent Company on long rides and cars. Summer novels were episodic in structure, they can be put down without losing the thread as other activities beacon. Most important light and easy to read. One of the most poynant examples i came across came from monthly in San Francisco and one season the critic noted that it was a especially lightweight selection of summer fiction that was available that year and almost inclined, he or she was almost inclined to criticize but they stopped and they said, it has been an incredibly different season that year and postulate that people needed something to take their minds away from that. Most important, publishers, authors and the Literary Press together work very, very specifically to reframe Summer Reading as a gracious feminine past time. Henry james kind of start this out, incredibly young, henry jane in the 1870s like many authors in this period who were just starting out wanted to get, become part of literary marketplace, they began with travel writing and james is no exception here. In 1870 he wrote a travel column for the nation and in dispatch written from Saratoga Springs he observed, for example, that there are, quote, few prettier sights graciously established in shaded spot with needle work or this quote later in the piece recounting a trip on a steamer crossing lake george to burlington, vermont, he focuses on the young women who are on the steam boat that he is on, on the steamer and reports that they are standing in a group on the deck with copies of work there. Benjamins latest novel, just published that year, they all had it in their hands. The lake as a whole vast simple underserved wilderness, startled to behold the little makeshifts of civilization. You have wonder at capital little steamer and young ladies from the hotel on the deck with copies of book there on their hands. Summer reading is becoming a performance and women are embracing that performance. Another link, very clear link in literary monthly that link women and Summer Reading. This is Charles Warner and hes writing comes summer novel, fluttering down the stall in procession through the railway cars, drawing room tables in light covers, attractive in colors and designs as welcome and grateful as the girls in muslin. Top show you how this narrative arc, this discourse, really takes shape and the become buyer is a really good site for doing this. You can see the process of reframing at work clearly in Charles Scrivener residents the book buyer. This publication is very little known today. It was published by Charles Scribner and it was a house organ, magazine designed to feature the firms own work, and at this time when it starts, 1867, scribner is specializing ecclesiastical text, the history of president the book buyer wag ten tepid about the prospect of summer publishing. It was called foreign literary intelligence and you can see that overhere on the left. It was the cover column and this offer insights of the book trade in england and the continent and 18668 the column noted in the face of scorching super, driving earn abroad in search of coolness that few new books were being brought out. That would have to wait for late autumn. A year later the column noted that london whats middle of a heated term that left people sweltering in broad cloth and tweeds his language, not mind and stymying the sale of books. Let me read you just a little bit from the august 1869 column. The papers say the thermometer in the Volunteer Camp at wimbledon on friday was 130 in the shade and seems to be an exaggeration the heat has been so intense the books have become weariness to the flesh and the issues of the publisher drop off gradually. In month or september or what is called the long vacation where everybody that is anybody takes this. Away from town. In short, people were just too busy in the summer with travel guide becomes to have any time for reading. Okay. Gradually, though, in later years, beginning in the 1880s especially, gradually the book buyer begins to explore the market for the potential for summer titles in the United States. Heres an advertisement from 1872, fairly early, its the first advertisement that scribner specifically labeled as Summer Reading. Summer reading, popular books from scribner, armstrong and company. And it may by kind of difficult to see here but base cliff this is the grab bag approach to Summer Reading. A grab bag of titles it has on hand. It reads on the upper lefthand side, french authors, very popular historical fiction and had ha new book out, millers story of the war. But also underneath it theres something called common sense in the household by marian harland. A Martha Stewart of her age, author of domestic advice books and on the right we have shooting, boating and fishing, link with the Summer Season. Now, that grab bag strategy, Marketing Strategy, is refined when we see scribner coming very much more sophisticated and in 1874 and 1876 there was a series called the bricabrac series, gossipy literary rem nebraskas scrivener positions as a summer if offering and the tisments of the period, the newspaper promotions and advertisements, soon reflected that discourse as well. They begin to describe it as the most pleasant Summer Reading aimed to take the tourist at the height of his ennui. They describe it as a refreshing volume, suitable for the country or sea shore and guaranteed to chase away the fatigue of a long journey in a pullman car. You can see critical notes on the left from a Christian Union to all lovers of literary anecdote and gossage whose whispers, the book with prove a refresh. In a tired mood. Her to boston post no more refreshing volume could be carried interest the country or the sea shore to fill in the nitches of time which intervene between the pleasure of summer holidays. By the 1880s, the discourse continues to develop. The strategy, Marketing Strategy continues, and the book buyer begins a very sustained defense of Summer Reading and has a much more sophisticated marketing campaign. The book buyer of this period has changed. Its very much less a house organ and more 0 literary magazine and publishing reviews of new books and advertisements from a variety of firms, appleton, mcmillan and others. And june 1884 the start of the Summer Season, it does the best summer books in paper editions, and then we have this, 1885, this is the first ad for summer books in paper covers. And this is very interesting in terms of the way the advertisement works. If you look closely you can see the price. Paperbound books, 50 crepts to a low of 30 cents cents. Cheaper than the 1. 25 cloth cover that the books might have appeared in. Now the first three are books by very, very popular wellestablished scribner authored many from the 1870s so theyre not new. We they Frank Stockton residents at the lady and the tying ore the story but family on a canal boat. It also mentions Francis Hodgkins burnes story but the coal mines of lank end england. All three of these books are novels set at summer resorts, so scribner is beginning to see the opinion of capitalizing specifically on Summer Reading, by featuring reading matter that is novel, fiction, light fiction, set at a summer resort. And then at the bottom we kind of have a miscellaneous of everything they had available. Now, some of the firms most popular authors had been advocating this for years, on the left we have francis burnett. Her husband, swan burnett, lob yesterday scribners repeatedly to issue low priced editions of his wifes work to compete with tv peterson. All the material on this side came from the scribner archives where i spent a week reading. Burnett wrote saying he hopes scribner could recommend a decent firm in new york that might take on the task of issuing us a wifes wife and cheap paperback editions and specifically is incredibly disengine reducely mentions both george mon roy which scribner would have been appalled by and the archrival harper which began the Franklin Square edition. Dodge made a much more obvious pitch for a summer volume. We ono her from hans brinker in and the silver skates skates ana popular childrens magazine but she had a collection of extort story short stores for adults and she saw a opinion torrey issuing it for the Summer Market and writes to scribners, quote do you think well of the idea of issuing a cheap and abridged edition of the book in a soft bit attractive cover for Summer Reading. Two years later she renewed her request for a cheap and thin covered edition, assuring scribners quote a number of literary friends have suggested that the book would do well as a summer book of this kind. And then finally my alltime favorite on the right, mary virginia, her pen name was marian harland. One of the firsts best selling authors, a prolific novelist in her own right and a 19th 19th century domestic diva and in 1890 an editor of a book called the homemaker. She wrote to scribner asking him if would be interested in their new novel that would be completed in september but she is writing to him. The novel was called, with the best intentions, and it was set at the resort at mackinaw island and increasingly popular resort in the great lakes. And she told scribner ought to have a fair summer sale especially in the west. Scribner was interested or at least quick to publish the novel. In a little more than four months after he first letter of inquiry the book was published as part of the yellow paper cover series and scribners advertised havefully july and august, including ill that year among the pick ford the best books for idle summer days. A little bit of an aside here. She had an entirely commercial motive. She said im building again and want a large sum of ready money, meaning she needed the 600 advance that scribner offer. A final chapper in book buyers are history which i want to suggest is suggestive of the larger Publishing Industrys discourse on Summer Reading as well. This is june 1888 issue. And scribners decided to good head to head with Publishers Weekly which had been publishing a special summer issue for the trade since the 1870s. But it tee voted its spire june 1888 issue exclusively to the summer book market and Summer Reading. This was something publishers routinely did for the christmas promowings but not at this point for the summer. And you can see here on the cover of this very, very definite buildup of the audience for Summer Reading as the woman reader. We see on the left a young woman, the white muslin, holding up her book, under some kind of an Apple Blossom tree, freshness and solitude, nothing of the heat and dust and crowds of Railroad Cars on summer leisure and that image gets repeated on a full page ad with this familiar formula. An old favorite, couple of back lift titles and a new model. The summer read is their center of the the woman reader will be part of strategy for the rest of the century. A trope that other publishers explosion making super reading a markedly female space. I have some posters here. By the 1890s, publishers used art posters like these to publicize new issues of the magazine. The poster for the center. Harpers, and all of them teaching the summer reader. Now, to be sure, reservations remained. Some magazines illustrators of the period turned to a really wry eye to the woman reader and Summer Reading practices and you can see these in the next three images. Ill try to go through these. This is a life magazine cover from july 1883. It features several people in ham hammock but prettiest thing is the young woman in the sir. See is absorbed in a novel titled a burglars love. Alone in the ham mac, bag hammock. She has a bag of candy at her side and is a consumer of both words and sweets. Another one, july 1886, this is an illustration which was running in harpers, fictional romp through the period summer resorts and heres the scene from the installment that takes place at newport, rhode island, called the shep heard and his flock by cs ryan heart and shows the School Teachers convention at the hotel in new port and every one of those young women here is totally absorbed in her paperback book or magazine while the preacher looks on. I dont think that is the reverend tall imagine. Seems a little more accepting. Then finally one of my favorite images from the period, july 1896 and it is charles gibsons call maroon. The gibson girl is near the summer dress on the beach, he body language suggesting the effect of too much locals sure and too much and unif he boxes of paper backed at their feet is any sign theyre suffering from too much reading. Having cop assumed the latest novel to arrive by mail the readers are spent. Finally, i think im doing okay with time here. Since i began with an example from boston, id like to end there as well. This example is very far removed from Alice Stone Blackwell and her copy of thief in the night. An example that complicates this suggestion of Summer Reading by referencing a second tradition from the 19th century. The counternarrative that summer is a time for serious sustained and thoughtful reading. So the book i want to end with in this illustration is taken from that back, its called the new harry and lucy, a store of life in boston. The mystery exceedingly familiar to anyone who is familiar with the genre, to anyone who has read any of the novels set at a summer resort. Two young people meet, fall in love in the summertime, e. The plot moved forward with the characters enengaging in a variety of summer activities. In this case they ride the street cars to riverside and represent a canoe. They visit the cemetery, ride the boat in the hampton, but the young lucy of the title attacked her summers especially seriously. For her, summer is a time also to visit the temple to hear a lecture helen keller, time to teach in a Vacation School for boston residents atrisk children. A time to end a birthday commemoration of jenny collins, suffragist and labor reformer who started a charity home for bostons poor working women. So summer was a time not just for wooing and ferry rided but for serious engamement with significant social issues and i found myself wondering that perhaps this is at the tenor of our Summer Reading today bit still will be Summer Reading. So, with that, i thank you. And i guess im going to channel my inner swan burnett by just calling your attention here. This is the cover of my book, 19th century publishing and the rise for Summer Reading. Available online front the university of massachusetts press. And i just put the code here for 30 off and free shipping. Our support for at the press would be greatly british appreciated and i will just stop sharing and good to questions. Yes. That would be great. So, just to refresh everyones memory you can either use the raised hand function at the bottom of the screen or the q a function and type in your questions. So, we have a couple questions that have come in. Are there any 19th century summer reads that are still read today . Oh, okay. Thats a question i really grappled a lot with. They definitely are efemoral. They definitely are of their time. Not many of them are available today with the public exception of the works will jim dean howell. One of the most prominent author offed the period. His work is still. The one book called one summer by an author named blanch Willis Howard that was incredibly popular. Most of the novels were there no one season and disappear but howards novels were published from 1870s to the 1900s and bond. Took place in maine and tells the story of a young woman who was courted by a young man. He was wildly popular. I found references to it in Harvard College library, books donated by harvard professors and that would probably come closest, the works of sarah jewett but the booked of their time pared and the tradition is part of ours today. Thank you, a great question. Tamara wrote, thank you, wonderful. With Summer Reading recommend as an escape from george beards version of im sorry dicant american nervousness or associated with a version of americaner in very nose that character crisissed it as languid i think what they were most concerned with was a hypersensitivity and so this whole nerd which they talk about women and womens hysteria and they definitely were in conversation. The critics of Summer Reading were in conversation with those dilatorious effects but for women they were more married not so much about lang your as about hypersensitivity to sexual stimulation by reading sensational novels. We couldnt have that. Does Summer Reading become populist beyond the middle class is . It marketed to working and noncaucasian audiences . I was really surprised by the range of audiences that it met. I had to tease this out. I found a number of books that were contributed to libraries, so a copy of one summer appeared the stan understand University Collection coming specifically from the stand stanford family and a copy of hard vatter from a hard regard separate michigan professor would donated it. At the same time, though, i looked theres a wonderful online site called what muncy read and it looked at what connect out of the lier in muncie, indian and indiana and we can trace reading. They were advertised in new england and california as well so novels about maine and the maine coast would appear in colorado z california, and working people would have been featured in the fiction but maybe less clear that it went beyond the middle class to the working class except for large do you think this type of reading and literature for women helped the sort of, quote, keep women in their mace and reinforced their in their place and reinforce their inferior status in society . Marriage was definitely a major concern. All of the plots had to do with marriage and this would have ban period of time just after the civil war, where you had a proliferation of young single women. You have to say that the glass half empty or half full . Does i provide it with agency . It does end in marriage for just about everyone. I can think of one exception and that its William Dean Howells novel. But the young women are shown in dramatically summer was a period of release and you have young women in canoes and going out unchaperoned, young women climbing trees and climbing mountains so its like with the shakespearean comedy where theres a period of fesssive relief and womenning trying out new roles, and given the freedom to do that but there is that marriage at the expend if you see that as containment or fruition i think the books leave that up in the air. Donna is a wonderful preparation. In your book you mention many of the characters in summer novels were reading summer novels. Can you talk about detention there . Was it for fun, a wink ask a nod, marketing . Yeah. A number of the novels the authors wrote are writing these are kind of very, very aware of what the conventions are. So very often there will be references to characters seeking out Summer Reading. In one summer for example the true people were married, they meet because the young guess out on a rainy night and saw a book and has to go out in the rain and she bumps into the man who will become her husband because she has to do that. Another young woman is being courted by multiple suitors and they have her reading in the novel itself. So its kind of a but the authors were very, very aware of kind of what the conventions were, what readers expected, and i dont want to say they were slavishly following it. Think in a number of cases, especially for howells, he advice very much exploding conventions, and showing the ways in which this genre can tell stories more complicated than simply lightweight. I think we may have time for one last question. I guess the last question could be, what happens with summer novels in the 20th century as we turn into the 20th century . I had to stop at some point. And i stopped in the early 1900s. But i went back through and just kind of looked. It persists. I went back and look, for example in times of war, what happens . And so the tradition of kind of putting the label on it. This persists. The idea of it being specific kind of novel issue think that persists as well, you can take the brand and some of the books set on nantucket and other placed it to that are very much designed for a female audience and trace the genre back but i cited clive barns by seeing the statue of liberty and apple pie is always with summer. It persists clearly as a marketing practice. Not sure it has the force of a culture practice today as it did back in the 19th century. Well, thank you very much for a wonderful presentation. And im going share with everyone how to go about getting a copy of this. If you want to order a company of the book its available from new mass press and the Discount Code is on then screen here and thank you everybody for joining us and we hope you enjoyed the program and consider courting to support mhs and joining us for thes of the programs over the summer while you may be on the beach reading. I hope everybody has a wonderful evening. Thank you. Cspan has top nonknicks becomes and author everyday weekending. This july 4th weekend, tonight at 11 00 p. M. Eastern, iowa rubble senator joany ernst talk but journey from growing up inwide to being the first female combat veteran in the u. S. Senate in her memoir, daughter of the heartland. Then sunday, at noon on in depth, a live twohour conversation with retired admiral james devote tis. Author offed bangs mug map at sea, the accidentality admiral, destroyer captain and sailing true north. Join your conversation with phone calls, emails and tweets at 8 30 p. M. Even and Martha Macsally talk bother career as the First Female Fighter Pilot to night combat and then Washington Post matter jordan with he first book about first lady melania trump. Watch booktv on cspan this weekend. At the American Enterprise institute in washington, mikeat strain, director on the institutes Economic Policy studies argued the majority of americans are better off then our current political debates make it seem. Heres portion of that event. Im not trying to diminish or sugar coat or to ignore any of the real problems we face. Instead im trying to being a security trying to be accurate about the broad picture of the american experience. How American Life is experienced by typical people, by most people in most circumstances. I think that we are focusing so much on these pockets of real struggle that we are confusing those pockets of struggle for the common experience facing people, and i think the American People keep hearing that their experience is the same as the experience of people in places who are really suffering and really struggling. I dont want to deny that suffering or that struggle but i want to say those are atypical situations and that the common experiences that much much more positive than the narrative suggests. To watch the rest of the Program Visit our website, booktv. Org, search for michael strain or the title of his book, the American Dream is not dead. Using the search box at the top of the page. Binge watch booktv this summer. Saturday evening, set until and watch several hours of your favorite authors. Next saturday, rear featuring william flint. Buck lee, author of over 50 books including up from liberalism, flying high, and the reagan i knew, and watch saturday july 18th at we feature malcolm gladwell. Binge watch booktv all summer on cspan2. Im kim mcclary president and crowe owe of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and town hall. Im pleased to introduce todays partnered program with writers bloc featuring jerry brown and jim newton. For those who are joining us online, we will be taking questions in about 20 minutes. Jessica, our Vice President of fed a ooh certained will manage your questions during the q a portion of the program. Well do our very best to take as many questions as we can its me great pleasure to introduce andrea grossman, founder and ceo