Looked at Summer Reading we are joined by professor 19th century publishing and the rise to Summer Reading a professor of the department of English Communications in Newport Rhode island with an undergraduate degree at merrimack and phd from university of illinois as a former magazine writer and editor including print culture and womens magazines and a radical or alternative press. A special welcome to anyone joining these programs for the first time and we have been collecting and preserving our history since and including the papers presence of the United States we are continuing to collect today and if you are interested we are currently collecting with covid19 experience and found that diverse standpoint for future generations. And was social distancing before we begin we have a few quick housekeeping things to go through so just to go over the details and have a presentation to have a questionandanswer period and with the q a function so send the questions to our speaker and she will answer them or use your raised hand that means you would like to ask a question we will unmute you if you have time. Then you want my have to unmute yourself as well. So i will introduce our speaker its great to see you. So i want to acknowledge so with this presentation i did find myself thinking is this the time to talk about 19th century publishing but the. That i focus on in my study in the beginning of the. In 1877 federal troops to follow the workers strike. And then with the failure of reconstruction of rapid industrialization so i would like to invoke the most prominent arguments and i extend that to Summer Reading and with a short period of time and gave people the wherewithal on their return. So lets just jump in. And began anywhere in the 19h century. And with the daughter of lucy stone and Henry Brown Blackwell the prominent 19th century abolitionist and womens rights advocate. In the early 18 seventies as a voracious reader in the summertime. And those that are served with the accounts of rushing into boston by train or streetcar. And with the Boston Public Library there were stacks of books she would devour then return. And among the titles that i mentioned like that the thin the night. But alice took part in the Summer Reading as well. And it engaged in shared family reading. And then those like sir walter and those that come out over this course of the summer evening from july 1972 i chased poppa to tickle his toes the Summer Reading choices will resonate today every year we are familiar with this. Oprah makes her pack for the best Summer ReadingNational Public radio, New York Times, the wall street journal and a host of other media outlets. And those that you can stuff into a beach bag we are told to reach for the white popular novel of the actionpacked bestseller the critic for the New York Times wrote 1968 that Summer Reading like the statue of liberty and motherhood is always with us. That is still true today it continues. I took a screen grab the first came from the memorial day weekend and the one on the bottom was from today the top one from your times the beaches are close but this is worth opening. To fight for millennial young women. And then with the boston globe online and i might know about the boston globe i had to go quickly through it to see what they were recommending and i was struck at one point the New York Times was criticized for books that had primarily white authors one season they accused of having peak odd that one capacity and this is incredibly varied so where does this idea come from so as a specific practice not only literary, theres that culture as well and those are the questions i began to explore. So my practice in the field authorship and reading and publishing it concerns itself with the material object but also with the Cultural Practices how they are produced and circulated and received. One summer i was returning from the print culture conference looking for something to read on the flight home and came from a brochure from the best from the season. And also from Brown University magazine from new york city publisher talking about it later as well. Pulling advertisements from other publishers what people were reading. So then i moved out to other newspapers from across the United States. Including the africanamerican and then going to publishing archives letters and journals a long list of novels many written by the periods of the most famous doctors louisa may olcott all practiced in the summer novel at some point in their career. So Summer Reading to be sure in the 19th century was a commercial construction the idea of Summer Reading was part of the concerted efforts to redefine a slow season to capitalize on capital and tourism and then it became a well established Cultural Practice and many of those remain with us today. With an interesting chapter and now just covering a lot of ground i just wanted to give you a little bit of flavor of the larger argument as well. In the. Where it is changing to be embraced by the middle class and i look especially the novel that was set at a summer resort. And that exploited the new genre in the way those physical spaces and those of those that were advertised that were built into the wide arms. That is the role of 19th century magazine culture played to be into the genteel practice im especially interested with the peacemaking publications harpers new monthly magazine so now the role will be very significant these were publications with authority to describe the atlantic for example of yankee humanism and in the age of the magazine to become the primary vehicle and that frames the text and prepares us as readers to read it in a certain way and a certain mind. So these and other publications shape the discourse through the task on text in digital. And where i want to go with this. Early in the century, the very beginning of the discourse on Summer Reading, want to move on to the complete disruption of what developed in the. And the publishers efforts to reframe and reclaim. We will see how that develops so the first part of the very early discourse lets just go back and i have some images here. Taking the read from england and europe Domestic Tourism developed in the late 17 hundreds like Niagara Falls , the hudson river and the catskills and tourism develops by the 18 thirties wealthy travelers were visiting you can see the bottom image on the right and with the Desert Island in maine with a host of other sites. Excuse me bear with me and is allergy season and newport starts to become the respite. And the opening story and 1835 and article summer philosophy with philosopher edmund perk and to live pleasant with the younger most experienced travelers to use their time to walk slow read and write and dress and undress studied and exquisite deliberation. And those having anything to do with politics that snapped the egotism charles slams essays and here is a another quotation and to the glass of hawk and the customary after dinner mask and the do we jazzman and the young man who follows this advice and to be very specific would cultivate a serenity that would last through october. Putnam in the 18 fifties with a dignified approach. In 1853 it was a collection of poetry of longfellow and others but then a collection of permanent value. Later in the 18 fifties putnam recommends the work of Summer Reading to describe her being as someone who happens to be his author as a beautiful genius and also noted was part of the classic series called delightful for Summer Reading. So heres a first look in the first glimpse and frame said as very distinctive and what it was designed to accomplish. By mid century that changed and it does so in large part because of the development of the literary field. And the wave of cheap paperback fiction after the civil war