Press. Before we begin the program i would like to extend a special welcome to anyone who will be joining Virtual Program the first time. If your not familiar with the massachusetts historical society, we are the first historical site in america and have been collecting, preserving, publishing and sharing your history of 1791. We hold an amazing collection of 14 million pages including the papers of the first three president of the United States. Sorry three of the first six president of the United States. I misspoke. We are continuing to collect today and if you are interested, we are currently collecting material related to the covid19 experience, we have a special initiative who will record peoples experiences during this unusual time and preserve a standpoint firsthand accounts for future generations. In the date of social distancing, we have taken hosting Virtual Programs and online programs playing every week until the end of july. Even into the beginning of august. Next week we hop hosting a talkh kate nelson under publication, the three cornered war and you 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 programs, you can contact me or sarah, or Public Program coordinator in the email programs 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. But of course we are nonprofit and independent nonprofit so if you have the capability and would like to support the massachusetts society, we encourage you to do so and you could do that by visiting mass or support, to go over the details how we use zoom, we will have a presentation by ms. Harringtonlueker and then a question and answer. And there are two ways get can ask questions, the first you have to use a q a function if youre using a computer, this is at the bottom of your screen and if youre using a tablet or a cell phone and might be at the top your screen but essentially its a q a function you click on that and type a question again and sarah and i will read the questions to our speaker and then she will answer them. The other way that you can do it is used to raise hand function, this will allow you to indicate that you would like to ask a question and we will unmute people if we have time, the one thing with the mute function, you will most likely need to unmute yourself as well. Keep that in mind. Without further ado im going to introduce our speaker in this today we will be hearing from donna harringtonlueker and if you would like to turn on your camera and meet yourself we will get off to the races. Great to see you and im now going to fade off into a digita 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 and as i have worked on this lecture in the presentation in the last week i must admit i did find myself thinking is this the time to think about Summer Reading and summer leisure or 19th century publishing but the last quarter of the 19th century is a period that i focus on in my study and it was not without those challenges at the beginning of the period in 1877 federal troops were sent in with the blood he worker strike against the railroad in the United States found the spanishamerican war and in between the country struggled with the failure of reconstruction in a period of rapid industrialization so the period was not our economic, social and political appease. With those challenges in mind, i would like to invoke the most prominent arguments of the period in favor of leisure and i would extend that to Summer Reading. That is that a short period of time away from the depression of the 19 century life, they gave people the wherewithal to engage with the world once again on their return and i hope tonights will work in the same way with you. Lets just jump in. I talk about the lives of Summer Reading and can begin anywhere in the 19th century but i would like to start with most specifically with alice stone blackwell, the daughter of lucy stone and henry blackwell, the prominent 19th century abolitionist and womens rights advocate. You can see it as a family portrait in a family photo over here on the left of the three of them. In the early 1870s, alice was a teenager and she was a voracious reader, especially in the summertime when her reading turned very dramatically to stories of adventure and temptation. If you read of journals in this. There filled with entries in accounts of rushing into boston by train or streetcar that pick up the latest issue of the popular ledger and weekly story paper or she talks about stopping at the posten Public Library for stacks of books that she devours one week and then returns the next. And from her journals, it changed my books and got out in time for dinner she writes in july 1872. I got a very good set of books this time, though ive read them all before. Among the titles that she mentioned in the journal, she mentions a mystery which she admits readily upset her nerves and also Thomas Hughes tom browder oxford which he describes as a favor. Alice took part in a Summer Reading as well and thats where the picture on the right is going to come in, this is the family home in dorchester. Lots of summer the stone blackwell household engaged in shared family reading, this is a very common practice in the 19th century. But in the summer they did so on the widow walk, you can see the home to take advantage of the cool breezes from the nearby bay. And there alice reports the family of sir, walter in the vanity fair. They read long novels whose talks with spool out over summer evenings. And her delight in the shared reading was absolutely apparent in another quote from her journal, it was read upon the roof she wrote in july 1872 and they chased poppa about to tickle his toes. I was strange, informal given to action and adventure in alices Summer Reading choices and her reading practices still rising neighbor this today, every year around memorial day weekend this Summer Reading season begins. Oprah makes her picks for the best summer read but so does the New York Times, National Public radio, the wall street journal and a host of other media outlets. Summer is a time when were advised to turn to lightweight paperback that we can stuff into a beach bag or read without worry by the poolside, it is the time that we are told to reach for the popular novel or the actionpacked bestseller, as clive a critic for the New York Times wrote in the paper summer book issue for 1968 he said Summer Reading like the statue of liberty and motherhood is always with us. And that is still true today. The list of best summer reads continues in this very very fraud season. Ive just taken a screen graph of the first one to three of them and it came from the weekend, the memorial day weekend itself and the one on the bottom was just from today. We see the top one is from the New York Times and the beach may be close but these books are worth opening, the next one down refinery 29 with the millennial young woman, the 25 books you will watch this summer on the left is from oprah the 28th of the beach reads of the summer 2020 and then another list, this one came from today this afternoon boston globe online the best books tribute the summer. And i might know here about the boston globe and had a chance to go quickly through it and see what they were recommending and i was really struck and at one point they New York Times it was criticized that included primarily white authors in one season they were accused of reaching peak car cassidy with her choices. And the best books to read the summer in the boston globe are incredibly varied and diverse. But where did this idea of Summer Reading come from. Summer reading as a specific practice, how did it come to be an established part, not only of literary commerce but of American Culture as well and those are some of the questions white i began to explore. Im a book historian and a practice in the field that looks at the intersection of authorship, reading and publishing. History is a field that concerns itself with the material object, first but also with the Cultural Practices that surrounded books, how books are produced, how they are circulated, how they are received in one summer i was returning from a conference in nova scotia and in the airport bookstore looking for something to read on the flight home and they came across the ubiquitous brochure that was announcing the best summer read for that season. And i found myself as a result thinking about my own Summer Reading rituals and the ways in which the Publishing Industry may have shaped and sustained those. So that led me to the library at Ground University where he worked at the magazine called the book fire, a magazine from charles scribner, the story of near city publisher and ill talk about it later in this as well, the very rich text for the advertisement from other couples about what the book trade was right, what people were reading and from there i moved on and outward. Into other 19th century magazines and newspapers from across the United States, i did not want to leave this in new england. The africanamerican. And a number of alternative presses. After that it was on to publishing archives with harvard and princeton in columbia onto letters and journals into a long list of novels set at summer resorts, many of them written by some of the periods absolutely most famous authors. Stephen crane, william b howell, louisa may alcott, sarah, they all practice in the tradition of the summer novel at some point in their career. What i found as a result of th this, they were not so idle, what i found was very interesting chapter in the history of publishing. Summer reading to be sure in the 19th century was very much a commercial construction. The idea of Summer Reading is a product and part of the Publishing Industry really concerted efforts to redefine a slow season and to capitalize on a really dramatic rise of travel, tourism and summer leisure entering america and the gilded age. But 19th century Summer Reading involves more ecommerce as well in the last 19th century and also became a wellestablished Cultural Practice, a performance in many of those characteristics remain with us today. Overall an interesting chapter both in the history of the book in the history of summer leisure. Now my book is self covered a lot of ground i reduce the table contents to give you a flavor of a larger argument as well. In the. Rage changing from an elite Cultural Practice to being embraced from a middleclass and uses as a marker of gentility. And i would be remiss in not noting the professional authors of the. Indulge in summer leisure. I also look up a variety that were advertised as best summer read and especially in the american summer novel, the novel that was specifically set at the summer resort. And finally i looked at the ways in which authorship intersected with and exploited the new genre. And at the ways in which physical spaces shape Summer Reading and i looked from resort library and circle the springs to shares that were advertised for portside reading the had bookshelves that were built into the very, very wide arms. Today i want to focus on one part of the books argument and that is the role of the 19th century magazine culture played in reframing Summer Reading into a genteel practice. I am especially interested in the so call publication in every produced covers of these on here. These are the three most prominent, the Atlantic Monthly which was published in boston, harpers new monthly magazine arrival in new york city in the century illustrated, their role is going to be very significant, these are publication that had a significant degree of Cultural Authority and they describe the atlantic for example as an exemplar yankee humanism in the copy that it future. In this age of the magazine, these publications and others become the primary vehicle to what they call the machinery of publishing and reviewing, that is the machinery that presents the book to readers in a certain way and framed it with establishment of complex that 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 on this. Shape the Summer Reading through the text and visuals and thats what i like to explore. Let me just say and give you an idea of where i want to go with us as we move ahead, its been three parts, i want to look at early in the century, the very beginning of a discourse on Summer Reading. I then want to move on to the complete disruption of cheap fiction that develops in the period. Finally i want to look at the publishers efforts to reframe and reclaim Summer Reading as something that we will see how develops. So the first part, that barely discourse on Summer Reading. Lets go back a bit and i have some images, painting from there. , taking his lead from england and europe and Domestic Tourism in the United States developed in the late 1700s around places like niagara falls, the hudson river and the catskills over here on the left and tourism develops around there, by the 1830s wealthy travelers were visiting the White Mountains, you can see that the bottom image on the right and the painting of the writing in the side of Mount Washington and they were in Mount Desert Island in maine and Mineral Springs in the south and a host of other sites. Excuse me it is allergy season if you can bear with me. Rhode island begins to take shape in the summer. Now i want to look into magazines that gives you the tenor of how the discourse begins. On the left 1835 the magazine, you can see here the opening story is on goodman brown, 1835, the magazine wrote an article called southern philosophy and it began by invoking the political philosopher edmund and his advice to live, that is the theme of this article. From a philosophy of eyes younger and experienced travelers with ways to use their time and did advise that they needed to use their time to cultivate equal limiting. Here is a quote, walk slow, talk slow, think slow, feed, read, write, dress, undress, and shortlived with studied in exquisite deliberation. And that deliberation needed to extend whatever reading matter the traveler chose, the similar travel for example was advised to avoid reading anything having to do with politics as well as anything that snapped the egotism. The best articles were charles liam and my moms essay, here is another quote, the reviewer wrote his lambs essays were to soda, the glass of hock, the customary after dinner nap with visual limb regarding, his jazzmen and chat with good girls under it. The young man who follows this advice in the articles very specific about the gender of the summer reader would cultivate a sweet and invertible serenity that was going to last him until october. Putnams over here on the right, in the 1850s is simile dignified approach and in 1853 putnams read a review of a poetry collection, a book for the seaside from the boston firm of kettner infield, collection of poetry about the sea featuring the works of shelley, longfellow and others in putnams was very keen on it and said it was going to be its not just a good summer read but a collection of permanent value. Later in the 1850s he would also recommend the work of washington for Summer Reading. It would describe irving who happened to be one of his authors as a genial and beatable genius. It also noted that he worked as part of a convenient and railway classics series that would be delightful for Summer Reading. So here is our first glimpse of a discourse taking shape, it explained as masculine, deliberate and very, very distinctive and what it was designed to accomplish. The change is gone and the discourse changes and it does so in large because its a really Interesting Development in the literary field and that is the wave of cheap paperback fiction that flooded the marketplace after the civil war, this was really and absently unprecedented expansion of victorian americans Popular Culture and a significant challenge to mainstream publishers, now that challenge took a variety of forms and ill go to cheap fiction. In this. This was before the passage of the International Copyright act, this wave of cheap fiction included the addition of british and european fiction. So George Elliotts march, alice in wonderland, sir, walter scott the talisman, charles dickens, all of these were not protected by copyright and in the United States to quickly pick them up and publish them in very cheap paper covered editions. Often in libraries, sometimes releasing the volume multiple times a week at a cost of about 10 20 cents a volume. Now readers probably would not find these in the bookstores, the cheap paperbacks instead they find them at newsstands, Railway Kiosk and on board trains, boys will go up and down selling snacks but also paper bounce books. And john pebble for example, by the 1870s virtually everyone took a train for a journey of anyone at all wouldve encountered a book from one of the popular cheap libraries. Cheap fiction took another form as well in the socalled fiction factory, these were stories that were quickly produced of questionable quality and long on murders and rescue and melodrama, very heavily formulated in real industrial commodity that flooded the market. Now one other part of this mix of cheap fiction needs to be mentioned. That is the questionable and perceived to be french novel typically appearing in yellow paper covers and people talk about this throughout the period and deprived by one of the. Critics of not being sinful but being scruffy list. So all of these are in the mix and you can kind of see three of the covers that will give you the flavor of this cheap fiction. So the captive of the frontier of beatle and company, western stories were incredibly popular and did a lot in the way of nationbuilding and in the middle Level Library with factories of barry lyndon and he was particular aggressive about the absence of a copyright and on the right one of the most popular writers of the period, prolific and wildly popular author working girl fiction and paper covers. Now what is the relationship with the Summer Reading, light Summer Reading becomes associated with this wave of cheap fiction, indeed a number of publishers and the. Try to exploit the connection and they wanted to take advantage of it. Here is one of them, George Munroe and your publisher and he had an incredibly successful series called the Seaside Library and you see on the left, this wouldve been the typical Seaside Library cover, doctor jekyll and mr. Hyde and it does say pocket edition and its going to become incredibly important in terms of marketing summer fiction at this time and the idea that you can slip into a pocket. In the middle you see George Munroe packaging that cheap paper back a little differently for the Summer Market so we have the Seaside Library pocket attention again and King Solomons lives but then you have the postcard with the white house and the couple on the cliff overlooking the sea, clearly evoking summer and summer time. And then finally over here on the right, this is my favorite cheap paperback and illustrates another way that they figured in the marketplace, again its Carla Jean Libby and flirtations of a beauty, lori jean wildly popular, three of her novels were set specifically at summer resorts, one at lenox, Atlantic City and this one flirtations of a beauty is initially in Newport Rhode island. Libbys thoughts were quite wild and incredibly predictable and their predictability in the plot here is the typical young woman that falls in love with a very, very rich man at newport and she knows that it will not work out because of the discrepancy in here she is showing sacrificing himself by throwing herself off and i like to think if youre familiar with newport i like to think this is long war but i have no reason for doing so. Here she is throwing herself off in a little cut line under it says i am going into the bitterness of death and im going to set you free. While this is early in the novel and she does not die and in fact as the story progresses, she ends up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire where shes kidnapped by pirates and taken down the Connecticut River in very libby fashion. This is all in about the first 50 60 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 a very prominent brooklyn preacher launched the Summer Season with a sermon basically condemning the Saratoga Springs and he criticized the dancing, gossip, the horseracing and all the other that he associated with the Saratoga Springs but it leveled some of his severe criticism against the Summer Reading itself and he called Summer Reading literary poison in august and he warned that the white novel that people read in the summer were dangerous to his congregation and mortal souls. So here we have him, two quotes from his sermon and this would get repeated in the book with some regularity. Do not let the fogs and the life of a Printing Press jump and crawl into your saratoga trump are white beliefs, would it not be an awful thing for you to be struck by lightning someday when you have in your hands one of these paper covered romances, and hero, heroin and a principal clerk, chapters in the book that you would not read to your children at the rate of 100 a line. I really believe there is trash among the intelligent classes in july and august then all of the other ten months of the year. Nor this town alone throughout the 19th century criticism of the novel in general and she paperback fiction was rampant. Nineteenth century clerks and cultural critics just about invariably acquitted novel reading with physical debasement especially for the woman reader. So given this cultural cross current, the. Between 1870 and 1900 wasnt the most continual setting for the white, reading but mainstream publishers persisted. And they used a variety of tactics, they are going to reclaim Summer Reading from this wave of cheap fiction. They used a variety of tactics, for example first in their advertising they begin to put labels on everything the best summer reads even if the book had absolutely nothing to do with the summer. They used another strategy of a summer Series Making them each a recognizable summer brand so appleton had its Town Country Library and they had the sunshine series, henry had leisure hours. There is a sounder series and in the case of one newspaper, 100degree in the shade summer fiction series. They also embrace the paperback is a perfect summer read. Here is a quote from the american bookmaker in the paper covers, these are the boo golden days of the paper cover in the structural cloth of the pocketbook, being without hovers they were cool in summary look and from their flexibility they may be readily stowed away in ones pocket or none filled corner of a traveling back, they have every conceivable reading attitude from the upright to the become net position assumed on a sofa or lounge or hammock or bed or stretched out on greenwood or sandy beach. I think perhaps most important taking aim at the cultural discourse that equated novel reading with the sinful, publishers work very specifically to reframe and repackage like Summer Reading, framing it as a genteel act, a welcome escape and essential middleclass treasure. , the case making that innocent earlier, the atlantic in the century, they have good tasting greeting and they all helped with this. When you read issues in this. You find in their pages, summer novels begin to be described as a way to the left the bacon hours that is a resort or protect against the boredom of rainy days. They are saying that summer novel did not demand too much attention but that made them Excellent Company on long rides and pulling cars. Summer novels were off the side of and structure but that was the best summer novels that could be picked up and put down without losing the thread if other activities back in. I think life is easy to read and summer novels were in escape of the pressures of 19th century life, one of the most poignant examples i came across came from the monthly alliterative monthly in San Francisco and one of the critic noted its inspection we lightweight selection of summer fiction that was available that year and he was a most inclined to criticize but then you stopped and you said it was an incredibly difficult color of season that year and they postulate that people needed something to take their minds away from them. Most important, publishers, authors and the Literary Trust together work very specifically to reframe Summer Reading as a gracious feminine past time. Henry james starts this out and hes incredibly young, henry james in the 1870s like many authors in this. You are just starting out and wanted to become part of a literary marketplace, they begin with travel writing and james is no exception here. In 1870 he wrote a travel column for the nation and in a dispatch written from saratogas rings he observed that there are few prettier sites than a charmingly dressed woman gracefully established in some the book at hand. Or this quote. Later in the piece he is recounting a trip. Is language mind. And thereby stymieing the sale of books. The memory due just a little bit from this in 1869. The papers say that the thermometer the volunteers camp at wimbledon on friday, at 130 degrees. In those this seems to be in exaggeration, it is been so intense that books have become wariness to the flesh rated in the issues of the publishers dont go from julie. So together during the months of august and september what is called the long vacation where everybody that is anybody, except self away. In short people were just too busy in the summer. Their travel guide books. To have any time for readers. So gradually though, in later years, beginning in the 1880s especially, the book buyer begins to explore the market for potential for titles in the United States. Heres an advertisement from 1872. This was fairly early. Specifically labeled Summer Reading. The popular books. It may be kind of difficult to see here. Basically, this is kind of that grab a bag of Summer Reading. It has titles that happen to have on hand. It reads in the upper lefthand side, these were french authors. A very popular historical fiction. But also, underneath it theres something called common sense in the household. Shes a bit of a steward average rate and she was a phenomenally popular author. Author of domestic advice books. Over in the right, we have shooting boating and fishing. Utilitarian ranks with the Summer Season. That grab bag strategy, Marketing Strategy gets refined a little bit. Very much more sophisticated. And what follows this is advertisement in 1974, then again in 1876. First series called the brexit series. This was a selection of reminiscent readings. Specifically of the summer offering in the advertisements of the periods, the newspaper promotions and advertisements still reflected this as well. Begin to describe it is the most pleasant Summer Reading. Aimed to take the tours at the height of his tour. They describe is refreshing. Sinful for the seashore and guaranteed to take away the fatigue of the long journey. You can see some of these in the critical notices here on the left. From the christian union, to all literary antidotes and the gossips whose whispers and the members of the same. The book will prove a refreshment. Over the boston post pointed no more refreshing volumes can be carried into the country or to the seashore to fill in the issues of time which intervene between a treasurer of summer holidays. By the 1880s, it took these years to develop the Marketing Strategy. In the book writer really begins a very sensitive reading. It has a much more sophisticated rocketing campaign. It is very much literary magazine. A literary monthly. In his publishing reviews of new books and advertisements. In june of 1884, the start of the Summer Season, and does the best summer books and paper additions. And then we have this, 1885. This is the first and for summer books and paper covers. And this is very interesting in terms of the way they advertise. If you look closely, you can see the prices. These are paper bound books. There 50 cents to a low of 30 cents. Keep publishing the definitely cheaper than the dollar 25. That the books mightve appeared in. The first three are books by very popular wellestablished authors. Many up from 1870s produce other not at this point. So we have the lady of the tiger. For the story about a family on a canalboat. That also mentions french a story about the coal mines. But it was very popular author. But look at the three titles underneath it. Three the middle are all by george. In the third is in the distance. All three of these are novels Senate Summer resorts. So from the beginning you think the potential of how they are specifically in the Summer Reading. Fiction and by fiction that affects the summer resort rated then at the bottom we kind of had Everything Else that they had available. Now, some of the firms most popular authors had been advocating this for years. And over the left you have Francis Hudson burnett. And her husband lobbied repeatedly for the lowpressure editions of his wifes books. All of the materials were archived at princeton right had the pleasure of a week of reading. And he wrote saying that he hope that he could let them in a decent firm in new york. And issuing his life sort and cheap paperback editions. Any specifically is incredibly disingenuously mentioned both George Munroe, which certainly would been appalled by. And even the rival which had begun its paperbacks additions for Summer Reading that year. In the middle, she made it much more obvious edge for summer volume. She was the author from the silver skates. She was also editor of a very popular summer childrens im sorry, jones magazine saint nicholas. But she had a collection of short stories from the adult market. And he had published at but she saw the potential for reissuing it for the Summer Market. And she writes, do you think well of the idea of issuing a very cheap edition of this book. And have u and attractive cover for Summer Reading. Two years later she renewed her request. Fred cheap edition. And a number of literary friends have suggested that the book would do well at the summer book of its kind. And then finally my alltime favorite over the right, mary virginia. And her pen name was mary harlems which i mentioned before. Is one of the bestselling authors of a novelist and rewrite as well as the 19th century domestic diva. In 1800, she was the editor of an entity called the homemaker. She was a real celebrity. If an act of 1980 she wrote exposure and see if he would be interested in her new novel which was then in the homemaker had not been completed yet. It would not be completed until september but in march he starting to them. It was called with the best intention. It was at mackinaw island and increasingly popular resort in the great lakes. And she would advise that he ought to be there in the summer sell especially in the west. So she tends to finish the novel. But he was interested or at least he would publish the novel. In little bit more than four months after her first inquiry, the focus published as part of the yellow a recovered series. And he advertise heavily in july and august including that your among the six of the best books for idle summer days. A little bit in the site here. And an entirely commercial motive for making this aspirated sheet was building again and when a large sum of ready money. She needed the 600 advance that he was offering. A final chapter in the book buyers history for Summer Reading. Which i really want to suggest the suggestive of the larger Publishing Industry. This is june 1888 issue. And scriptures here decided to go headtohead with publishers weekly. In been publishing a special summer issue since the 1870s. It is devoted his entire issue exclusively to the mark market for the Summer Reading. Routinely did for the christmas promotions. They had not done at this point for the summer. And you can see here on the cover, is very definite buildup for the Summer Reading. So we see on the left young woman she seems to be under some kind of an Apple Blossom tree. Nothing of the heat and dust and crowds or Railroad Cars would been intended on summer leisure. It was repeated the fourth page ad in this familiar formula. An old favorite, titles in a new volume as well. In the woman reader becomes the center of the Marketing Strategy. The woman reader is going to stay there for the rest of the century. That other publishers exploit, making Summer Reading a most female space. So i have some posters here for example. By the 1890s, publishers used posters like these to publicize new issues of the magazine. As a poster for the century. Harper. All of them teaching the summer reader. Now to be sure that these remained. Some magazines, readers of the. Ten or turn a dry eye to the woman reader in the Summer Reading and you can see these in the next three images. This is a life magazine cover from july 1883. In a feature several people in hemet but its the young woman in the center, she is absorbed in a novel. She is alone, captain amick. She has a bag of candy. If you look very closely under her elbow. She is a bag of candy by her side so she becomes a consumer of both words and of suites. And another one. July 18th 86. This was an illustration from mourners pilgrimage. Which was one of the covers. It was a fictional rock to the period of the summer resorts. And heres a scene from the thing that takes place at newport, rhode island. It shows School Teachers convention at the hotel in newport. And every one of the young women here is totally absorbed in her paper book book or magazine while the preacher looks on rated and i dont think that ise referent there. Seems a little bit more accepting. And then filing one of my absolute favorite images of this. , from july of 1897 phrase Charles Gibson called marooned. In the distinctive gibson girl is here, and her summer dress on the beach. Her body language suggesting effects of too much leisure and too much sun. As the boxes and paperbacks at their feet or any sign their suffering from too much Summer Reading. Having consumed the latest novel to arrive by mail. The readers are spent. Finally, i think of doing okay with the time here. Since i think again with an example from boston, i would love to end there as well. This example was very far removed from blackwell and her copy of thief in the night. Its also an example that complicates the Summer Reading viper freight sink the second edition the takes shape in the 19th century. The counter narrative, time for serious and sustained and thoughtful reading read so the book i want to end with, and this illustration is taken from the book. It is called the new area in the sea, story of boston in the summer of 1891. And despite edward hale and his sister. In the plot is exceedingly familiar to anyone who is familiar with this genre. To anybody was read any of the novels set at the summer resorts. Two young people meet, they fall in love in the summertime. The plot moves forward with the characters engaging with the variety of summer activities. In this case, they read the streetcars to riverside with a frantic canoe. They visit the cemetery, the right the boat to hampton evaporated but the title takes for summers especially seriously. So her, summer is a time also to visit the temple. And to helen keller. Its a time to teach and Vacation School for bosses at risk children. And jenny collins, they would establish the charity home for bostons or for the women. So summer in other words, was a time not just for ferry rides. Before serious engagement with significant social issues. And i find myself wondering if i put this together, perhaps this will be the tenor of our Summer Reading today. But it still will be Summer Reading. So with that, i thank you. And it definitely avoided channel my inner salon. It is calling your attention there, this is the cover of my book. Its Available Online from the university of massachusetts press. And just put the code here for 30 percent off and free shipping. Your support for the press would be greatly appreciated. And i guess i will just stop sharing and will go to questions. Host that would be great. Just to refresh everyones memory. You can use the race and function of the bottom of the screen with the q a function. We have a couple of questions that are coming. Are there any 19th century some readings are still run today. Is a question that i really grappled a lot with. They definitely are of their kind. But many of them are available today with applause possible, the authors of the period in his work is still there. There is one book called one summer by another by the name of blanche it was incredibly popular. Most of these novels were there for one season then they disappeared. And blanches novel was published every year from 1970s on through to the 19 hundreds and beyond. It told the story be young woman who was courted by a young man. It wildly popular. Found references to it in the Harvard College library. Books done by harvard professors. That would probably come closest to the works. But i think they are, the books are very much of the time and the tradition is very much a part of ours today. Theres a great question. Was Summer Reading, from the georges version of, i am sorry, i cannot program and pronounce it. Its a version that characterizes it as his ability. I think when they were probably most concerned with was kind of a hypersensitivity and so the full. It mission talk about women and womens hysteria and said they definitely were in conversation. The critics were definitely in conversation with those notorious effects for women i think they were more worried, not too much about language as about a hypersensitivity to stimulation by reading sensational novels we couldnt have that. Host does the Summer Reading, moved beyond the class. Is it marketed to different audiences. I kind of have to tease this out. He found number of books that were contributed to libraries. So a copy of one summer appeared in the collection and income specifically from the stanford family. And also a copy of harvard has an indication of a harbor political professor was donated. And at the same time though, there is a wonderful online site that is called multi red. It looked at what was in the library at indiana. We can kind of trace summer novels there as well. It was a kind of a final piece of this. They work advertised not just in movement but also in california. So novels about the maine coast wouldve. In california. There working people wouldve been featured in the fiction. The maybe less clear that it went on to the middle class to the working class. Except for the, i want to call if they reinforced their status. Is that right . Marriage was definitely a major concern. All of the had to do with marriage. And this wouldve been a period of time just after the civil war where you had a fuller affirmation of young single women. Supine of have to say that that halfempty or is and have full. Booms provided an agency. And indents ended marriage or just about everyone i think of one exception and that is going to be in howells novel. So i guess that young women are showing in a dramatically, so you have young women in canoes. You had young woman and chaperoned. And climbing trees and climbing mountains. Cisco like with that shakespearean comedy. Where there is a period of relief where women are trying different things. In a given to do that. But there is that marriage at the end. And whether you see that is containment or fruition, i think this books kind of leave that up in the air. Host donna, a wonderful presentation for it in your book you mentioned many of the characters in the summer novels are themselves reading the summer novels. Can you talk about the intention of that. Was it fun, annoyed, marketing. Yes, it really with the novels. The authors these are kind 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 two eventually marry. To me because the young woman goes out in a ready night because she has seen a paperback bestseller in the drugstore that morning. And she has to go out in the rain in order to do that. 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 centers. And they have her reading a novel itself read so its kind of an analysis if you will. With the authors very aware. And of the idea of it being a specific kind of novel, that persists as well that you can take the books that are other places today very much designed for a female audience and trace dot chandra back. Like the statue of liberty and apple pie its always with it and i think its persists as a marketing practice. I am not sure that it has a Cultural Practice today as it did back in the 19th century. Host thank you very much for a wonderful presentation. I am going to share with everyone how to go about getting a copy of this. So if you would like to order a copy of the book, it is available and the Discount Code is on the screen. Thank you everyone for joining us. We hope you enjoy the program and consider continuing to support and joining us for the rest of the program. A shameful rollcall of the most catastrophic the trails and blunders in our lifetime. He spent his entire career on the wrong side of history. They make the current president has failed in his most basic duty to the nation. Hes failed to protect us and to protect america. And my fellow americans, that is unforgivable hello everyone. Thanks for turning out. I am theks
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