| The Erie Canal Reader, 1790-1950 Contributor(s): Hecht, Roger W. (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0815607598 ISBN-13: 9780815607595 Publisher: Syracuse University Press OUR PRICE: $17.96 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2003 Annotation: A compendium of writings on the Erie Canal by a range of important literary figures. The Erie Canal Reader--poems, essays, travelogues, and fiction by major American and British writers--captures the colorful landscape and life along the Erie Canal from its birth in the New York frontier, through its heyday as a passage of culture and commerce, to its present decline into disuse. Part celebration of the men and women who worked its waters and part social observation, these writings by such figures as Basil Hall, Frances Trollope, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and others provide first-hand observations of the canal country and its role in the evolution of American social and economic culture from frontier to industrial prominence. In addition to depictions of canal life, the pieces offer glimpses of early tourist resorts, like Trenton Falls, and observations of religious experiments that made New York's "burned over district" a horbed of social and political reform. Also included are works by the most prominent Erie Canal writers, Walter D. Edmonds and Samuel Hopkins Adams, whose stories and novels bring a modern sensibility and insight to their reflections on the canal. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Collections | American - General - History | United States - State & Local - General |
| Dewey: 810.997 |
| LCCN: 2002151209 |
| Physical Information: 0.45" H x 5.52" W x 8.68" (0.49 lbs) 184 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Mid-Atlantic - Cultural Region - Northeast U.S. - Geographic Orientation - New York |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Erie Canal Reader--poems, essays, travelogues, and fiction by major American and British writers--captures the colorful landscape and life along the Erie Canal from its birth in the New York frontier, through its heyday as a passage of culture and commerce, to its present decline into disuse. Part celebration of the men and women who worked its waters and part social observation, these writings by such figures as Basil Hall, Frances Trollope, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and others provide first-hand observations of the canal country and its role in the evolution of American social and economic culture from frontier to industrial prominence. In addition to depictions of canal life, the pieces offer glimpses of early tourist resorts, like Trenton Falls, and observations of religious experiments that made New York's "burned over district" a hotbed of social and political reform. Also included are works by the most prominent Erie Canal writers, Walter D. Edmonds and Samuel Hopkins Adams, whose stories and novels bring a modern sensibility and insight to their reflections on the canal. |