This book examines over 125 American, English, Irish and Anglo-Indian plays by 70 dramatists which were published in 14 American general interest periodicals aimed at the middle-class reader and consumer.

This publication examines over 125 American, English, Irish and Anglo-Indian plays by 70 dramatists which were published in 14 American general interest periodicals aimed at the middle-class reader and consumer.

This publication examines over 125 American, English, Irish and Anglo-Indian plays by 70 dramatists which were published in 14 American general interest periodicals aimed at the middle-class reader and consumer.

In American Drama: The Bastard Art, Susan Harris Smith looks at the many often conflicting cultural and academic reasons for the neglect and dismissal of American drama as a legitimate literary form. Covering a wide range of topics - theatrical performance, the rise of nationalist feeling, the creation of academic disciplines, and the development of sociology - Smith's study is a contentious and revisionist historical inquiry into the troubled cultural and canonical status of American drama, both as a literary genre and as a mirror of American society.

America at the last fin de siecle was in a period of profound societal transition. Industrialization was well under way and with it a burgeoning sense of professionalism and a growing middle class that was becoming increasingly anxious about issues of race, gender, and class. "The American 1890s: A Cultural Reader" is a wide-ranging anthology of essays, criticism, and fiction first printed in periodicals during those last remarkable years of the nineteenth century, a decade commonly referred to as the "golden age" of periodical culture.
To depict the many changes taking place in the United States at this time, Susan Harris Smith and Melanie Dawson have drawn from an eclectic range of periodicals: elite monthlies such as "Scribner's, Harper's, " and the "Atlantic Monthly;" political magazines such as the "North American Review" and "Forum;" magazines for general readers such as "Cosmopolitan" and "McClures;" and specialized publications including the "Chatauquan, Outing, " and "Colored American Magazine." Authors represented in the collection include Andrew Carnegie, Edith Wharton, Theodore Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, Booker T. Washington, Stephen Crane,
W. E. B. DuBois, Jacob Riis, and Frederick Jackson Turner. A general introduction to the period, a brief contextualizing essay for each selection, and a comprehensive bibliography of secondary sources are provided as well. In examining and debating the decade's momentous political and social developments, the essays, editorials, and stories in this anthology reflect a constantly shifting culture at a time of internal turmoil, unprecedented political expansion, and a renaissance of modern ideas and new technologies.
Bringing together a carefully chosen selection of primary sources, "The American 1890s" presents a remarkable variety of views--nostalgic, protective, imperialist, progressive, egalitarian, and democratic--held by American citizens a century ago.