Overview

In Archives of Labor Lori Merish establishes working-class women as significant actors within literary culture, dramatically redrawing the map of nineteenth-century US literary and cultural history. Delving into previously unexplored archives of working-class women's literature-from autobiographies, pamphlet novels, and theatrical melodrama to seduction tales and labor periodicals-Merish recovers working-class women's vital presence as writers and readers in the antebellum era. Her reading of texts by a diverse collection of factory workers, seamstresses, domestic workers, and prostitutes boldly challenges the purportedly masculine character of class dissent during this era. Whether addressing portrayals of white New England ""factory girls,"" fictional accounts of African American domestic workers, or the first-person narratives of Mexican women working in the missions of Mexican California, Merish unsettles the traditional association of whiteness with the working class to document forms of cross-racial class identification and solidarity. In so doing, she restores the tradition of working women's class protest and dissent, shows how race and gender are central to class identity, and traces the ways working women understood themselves and were understood as workers and class subjects.

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9780822362999

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Reviews

An extraordinary achievement, <i>Archives of Labor</i> uncovers and compiles a rich, deep, and complex body of working women's writings, arguing passionately and persuasively about why this archive matters for understanding popular fiction, labor history, women's history, and literary history. Lori Merish's spectacular work makes a major contribution. --Glenn Hendler, author of Public Sentiments: Structures of Feeling in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

An extraordinary achievement, Archives of Labor uncovers and compiles a rich, deep, and complex body of working women's writings, arguing passionately and persuasively about why this archive matters for understanding popular fiction, labor history, women's history, and literary history. Lori Merish's spectacular work makes a major contribution. -- Glenn Hendler, author of * Public Sentiments: Structures of Feeling in Nineteenth-Century American Literature * Lori Merish reminds us that when it comes to thinking about gender and race, the factory was as important as the home. She also dissolves any lingering notions that literature produced by and about working people, especially working women, lacks complexity or social and psychic depth. Archives of Labor recovers a compelling archive while providing insight into the gendered conditions of labor in the antebellum United States. -- Russ Castronovo, author of * Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States *

Archives of Labor is a marvel of archival recovery. Exploring many previously unknown and understudied texts, Merish focused not just on novels and poetry, but also on radical labor periodicals, pamphlet novels, periodical literature, theatrical melodrama, the testimonios of Mexican mission workers, and other literary ephemera. . . . An important interdisciplinary contribution to feminist history and literary scholarship. -- Ana Stevenson * Australasian Journal of American Studies * In the depth and range of her arguments, as well as in the important questions about methodology that her work implicitly raises, Merish opens up new debates and issues for feminist working-class recovery projects in the antebellum period and beyond it. . . . Future scholars and activists can build on Merish's imaginative and resourceful study. -- Francesca Sawaya * American Literary History * [Archives of Labor] is a remarkable feat of original research and suggests routes for further study - not least on formal innovation and tone in antebellum literature. -- Stephanie Kelley * Times Literary Supplement *

Lori Merish reminds us that when it comes to thinking about gender and race, the factory was as important as the home. She also dissolves any lingering notions that literature produced by and about working people, especially working women, lacks complexity or social and psychic depth. Archives of Labor recovers a compelling archive while providing insight into the gendered conditions of labor in the antebellum United States. -- Russ Castronovo, author of Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States An extraordinary achievement, Archives of Labor uncovers and compiles a rich, deep, and complex body of working women's writings, arguing passionately and persuasively about why this archive matters for understanding popular fiction, labor history, women's history, and literary history. Lori Merish's spectacular work makes a major contribution. -- Glenn Hendler, author of Public Sentiments: Structures of Feeling in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

[Archives of Labor] is a remarkable feat of original research and suggests routes for further study - not least on formal innovation and tone in antebellum literature. -- Stephanie Kelley * Times Literary Supplement * An extraordinary achievement, Archives of Labor uncovers and compiles a rich, deep, and complex body of working women's writings, arguing passionately and persuasively about why this archive matters for understanding popular fiction, labor history, women's history, and literary history. Lori Merish's spectacular work makes a major contribution. -- Glenn Hendler, author of * Public Sentiments: Structures of Feeling in Nineteenth-Century American Literature * Lori Merish reminds us that when it comes to thinking about gender and race, the factory was as important as the home. She also dissolves any lingering notions that literature produced by and about working people, especially working women, lacks complexity or social and psychic depth. Archives of Labor recovers a compelling archive while providing insight into the gendered conditions of labor in the antebellum United States. -- Russ Castronovo, author of * Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States *

Author Information

Lori Merish is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University and the author of Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature, also published by Duke University Press.

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