Overview

Love and the Working Class is a unique look at the emotions of hard-living, nineteenth-century Americans who were often on the cusp of literacy. These laboring folk highly valued letters and, however difficult it was, wrote to stay connected to those they loved. This book displays the personal expression of factory hands, manual laborers, peddlers, coopers, carpenters, lumbermen, miners, tanners, haulers, tailors, seamstresses, laundresses, domestics, sharecroppers, independent farmers, and common soldiers and their wives. Entering the

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9780197514221

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Reviews

"""This is a bold history, powered by phenomenal research and striking insights into the differences between working-class and middle-class understandings of love, family, and local ties in the 19th century."" * Nancy F. Cott, Jonathan Trumbull Research Professor of American History, Harvard University * ""I have greatly looked forward to this book, and it does not disappoint -- it's a truly imaginative contribution to the history of emotion, the family and community, and the American working class. The range of letters on which the study is based is amazing, and the analysis of the distinctive emotional styles persuasive. There is rich material as well for students to explore in dealing with a more inclusive emotional history."" * Peter N. Stearns, Distinguished University Professor of History, George Mason University *"

Author Information

Karen Lystra is Professor of American Studies Emerita at California State University, Fullerton. She is the author of Dangerous Intimacy: The Untold Story of Mark Twain's Final Years and Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, a Distinguished Faculty Award, and Outstanding Honors Professor of the Year. She is a former president of the Western Association of Women Historians.

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