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Casper, Scott E. Constructing American Lives : Biography and Culture
in
Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1999.
"The variety and depth of the Biography collection made my study far
more
than I had originally planned, raising key questions about what the
category "biography" meant to nineteenth-century Americans. Campaign
biographies of presidential candidates (from little pamphlets to bound
volumes), memoirs of ordinary Christian women, collective biographies
ranging from shoemakers to missionaries: AAS has them all, often in
multiple editions. Thus the clothbound, paperbound, and London editions
of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Life of Franklin Pierce enable a scholar
to
trace publishing history, not just read for content. Finding a deck of
the "Authors" game with four "Biographers" cards -- the week before my
book's cover was to be designed! -- iced an already rich cake."
- Scott E. Casper, University of Nevada (Reno)
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