Authors of Their Lives : The Personal Correspondence of British Immigrants to North America in the Nineteenth Century / David A. Gerber.
Gerber, David A., author.
2006
E184.B7 G47 2008
Available Online

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Title Authors of Their Lives : The Personal Correspondence of British Immigrants to North America in the Nineteenth Century / David A. Gerber.
Author Gerber, David A., author.
ISBN 9780814733219
DOI https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814733219.001.0001
Published New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2006]
Copyright ©2006
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers 10.18574/nyu/9780814733219.001.0001 doi
Call Number E184.B7 G47 2008
Dewey Decimal Classification 973.5092241
Summary 2008 United States Postal System's Rita Lloyd Moroney AwardIn the era before airplanes and e-mail, how did immigrants keep in touch with loved ones in their homelands, as well as preserve links with pasts that were rooted in places from which they voluntarily left? Regardless of literacy level, they wrote letters, explains David A. Gerber in this path-breaking study of British immigrants to the U.S. and Canada who wrote and received letters during the nineteenth century.Scholars have long used immigrant letters as a lens to examine the experiences of immigrant groups and the communities they build in their new homelands. Yet immigrants as individual letter writers have not received significant attention; rather, their letters are often used to add color to narratives informed by other types of sources.Authors of Their Lives analyzes the cycle of correspondence between immigrants and their homelands, paying particular attention to the role played by letters in reformulating relationships made vulnerable by separation. Letters provided sources of continuity in lives disrupted by movement across vast spaces that disrupted personal identities, which depend on continuity between past and present. Gerber reveals how ordinary artisans, farmers, factory workers, and housewives engaged in correspondence that lasted for years and addressed subjects of the most profound emotional and practical significance.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
In New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
Available in Other Form print 9780814731710
Linked Resources Online Access
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Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Letters and Immigrants
Part I Immigrant Epistolarity
Introduction
1 Traditions of Inquiry
2 Forming Selves in Letters
3 Writing with a Purpose: Immigrant Epistolarity and the Culture of Emigration
4 Using Postal Systems: Transnational Networks on the Edge of Modernity
5 Establishing Voice, Theme, and Rhythm
6 When Correspondence Wanes
Part II Four Lives in Letters
Introduction
7 Thomas Spencer Niblock: A Dialogue of Respectability and Failure
8 Catherine Grayston Bond: Letter-Writing as the Practice of Existential Accounting
9 Mary Ann Wodrow Archbald: Longing for Her "Little Isle" from a Farm in Central New York
10 Dr. Thomas Steel: The Difficulties of Achieving the Reunited Family
Abbreviations for Archives and Repositories Consulted
Notes
Collections of Letters Consulted
Index
About the Author

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