Authors of their lives : the personal correspondence of British immigrants to North America in the nineteenth century / / David A. Gerber

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910814025103321
• Autore: Gerber David A. <1944->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New York, : New York University Press, c2006
• ISBN: 0-8147-3272-0; 0-8147-3321-2; 1-4294-1413-8
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (432 p.)
• Disciplina: 973.5/092/241
• Soggetti: British Americans; British - Canada; Immigrants - United States; Immigrants - Canada; Letter writing - History - 19th century; Transnationalism - History - 19th century; Immigrants' writings, American; United States Emigration and immigration History 19th century Sources; Canada Emigration and immigration History 19th century Sources; Great Britain Emigration and immigration History 19th century Sources
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Traditions of inquiry -- Forming selves in letters -- Writing with a purpose : immigrant epistolarity and the culture of emigration -- Using postal systems : transnational networks on the edge of modernity -- Establishing voice, theme, and rhythm -- When correspondence wanes -- Thomas Spencer Niblock : a dialogue of respectability and failure -- Catherine Grayston Bond : letter-writing as the practice of existential accounting -- Mary Ann Wodrow Archbald : longing for her "little isle" from a farm in central New York -- Dr. Thomas Steel : the difficulties of achieving the reunited family.
• Sommario/riassunto: 2008 United States Postal System's Rita Lloyd Moroney Award. In 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 the