A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More Information
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CIVIL WAR LITERATURE Th is book is the fi rst omnibus history of the literature of the American Civil War, the deadliest confl ict in U.S. history. A History of American Civil War Literature examines the way the war has been remembered and rewritten over time. Th is history incorporates new directions in Civil War historiography and cultural studies while giving equal attention to writings from both the northern and the southern states. Written by leading scholars in the fi eld, this book works to redefi ne the boundaries of American Civil War literature while posing a fundamental question: Why does this 150-year-old confl ict continue to capture the American imagination? Coleman Hutchison is an associate professor of English at Th e University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses in nineteenth-century U.S. literature and culture, bibliography and tex- tual studies, and poetry and poetics. He is the author of the fi rst literary history of the Civil War South, Apples and Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America (2012) and the coauthor of Writing about American Literature: A Guide for Students (2014). Hutchison’s work has appeared in American Literary History, Common-Place, Comparative American Studies, CR: Th e New Centennial Review, Journal of American Studies, Th e Emily Dickinson Journal, PMLA , and Southern Spaces, among other venues. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CIVIL WAR LITERATURE Edited by COLEMAN HUTCHISON University of Texas, Austin © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107109728 © Coleman Hutchison 2016 Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2016 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A History of American Civil War Literature / [edited by] Coleman Hutchison, University of Texas, Austin. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-10972-8 (hardback) 1. United States – History–Civil War, 1861–1865 – Literature and the war. 2. War and literature – United States – History. 3. American literature – History and criticism. 4. War in literature. I. Hutchison, Coleman, 1977– editor. PS 217. C 58 H 57 2015 810.9′358–dc23 2015016877 ISBN 978-1-107-10972-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URL s for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information For Kathleen Diffl ey, Dean of Civil War Literary Studies © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information Contents List of Illustrations page ix Notes on Contributors xi Preface xvii Acknowledgments xxiii Part I Contexts 1 Harriet Beecher Stowe and the “Book Th at Made Th is Great War” 3 Judie Newman 2 Th e American Book Trade and the Civil War 17 Michael Winship 3 Th e Transatlantic History of Civil War Literature 33 Christopher Hanlon 4 Th e “American Renaissance” after the American Civil War 48 Randall Fuller 5 Th e Realists’ Civil War 62 Ian Finseth Part II Genres 6 Dépôt Culture: Th e Civil War and Periodical Fiction 79 Kathleen Diffl ey 7 Imitation and Resistance in Civil War Poetry and Song 96 Faith Barrett 8 Children’s Literature 119 James Marten vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information viii Contents 9 Writing Lives: Civil War Diaries 134 Jane E. Schultz 10 Civil War Memoir 151 Sarah E. Gardner 11 Civil War Narrative History 165 T. Austin Graham Part III Figures 12 Walt Whitman 181 Martin T. Buinicki 13 War and the Art of Writing: Emily Dickinson’s Relational Aesthetics 195 Shira Wolosky 14 Herman Melville and the Civilian Author 211 Milette Shamir 15 Looking at Lincoln 227 Shirley Samuels 16 Frederick Douglass, Violence, and Abraham Lincoln 242 Robert S. Levine 17 Mary Boykin Chesnut: Epic and Miniature 257 Julia A. Stern 18 Mark Twain 272 Neil Schmitz 19 Replay: William Faulkner and the Civil War 288 John T. Matthews 20 Robert Penn Warren’s Civil War 303 John Burt 21 Natasha Trethewey’s Civil War 316 Daniel Cross Turner 22 Afterword: Archiving the War 331 Christopher Hager and Cody Marrs Recommendations for Further Reading 343 Index 349 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information Illustrations Figures 6.1 “Grand Central Dépôt, New York” page 81 6.2 “Waiting for the Train” 85 6.3 “Going on Board” 89 6.4 Grand Central Dépôt train shed from 45th Street and Lexington Avenue 92 22.1 John Russell Bartlett’s Literature of the Rebellion showing manuscript addition 335 Tables 2.1 Bookstores in the Southern States before the Civil War 22 2.2 Bookstores in the Southern States after the Civil War 28 ix © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information Notes on Contributors Faith Barrett is Associate Professor of English at Duquesne University. She is the author of “To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave”: American Poetry and the Civil War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012) and coeditor with Cristanne Miller of “Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005). Martin T. Buinicki is Walter G. Friedrich Professor of American Literature at Valparaiso University. He is the author of Walt Whitman’s Reconstruction: Poetry and Publishing between Memory and History (University of Iowa Press, 2011) and Negotiating Copyright: Authorship and the Discourse of Literary Property Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Routledge, 2006). Buinicki has also published essays in Witness to Reconstruction: Constance Fenimore Woolson and the Postbellum South, 1873–1894 (University of Mississippi Press, 2011), American Literary History , American Literary Realism , the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, and War, Literature, and the Arts . John Burt is Professor of English at Brandeis University. He is the author of Lincoln’s Tragic Pragmatism: Lincoln, Douglas, and Moral Confl ict (Harvard University Press, 2013), the book-length essay “After the Southern Renascence” in the Cambridge History of American Literature Vol. VII (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism (Yale University Press, 1988). Burt, who is the literary executor for Robert Penn Warren, has also won awards for his editorial work on Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (Louisiana State University Press, 2001) and Th e Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (Louisiana State University Press, 1998). Kathleen Diffley is an associate professor of English at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Where My Heart Is Turning Ever: Civil War Stories and Constitutional Reform, 1861–1876 (University of Georgia xi © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information xii Notes on Contributors Press, 1992) and the editor