Scrapbook of poetry excerpted from periodicals

American, ca 1840. Decorative paper board binding of the period.. Good; binding shaken and text block split; some overall toning; still generally sound in attractive batiked paper (wallpaper?) boards.. Small 4to, [90] pp. - text with some illustrations. Owner's name is faintly written in pencil on the front pastedown.

Charming period scrapbook of pasted excerpts mainly by women authors from the press of the day. Choice extracts from the ephemera of daily life, with poetic reflections on love, friendship, parting, youth, and death, as well as short prose discussions. There is a broad range of verse. "The new periodicals founded in the 1830s and 1840s not only constructed the “popular woman writer” as the creator of viral content accessible to a mass-market audience; they also imagined the “popular woman reader” as a consumer of literary commodities … The selection and arrangement of scraps came to be associated with “feminine” domestic culture, serving as both a leisure activity and a creative outlet. Miscellaneous columns were likewise designed to appeal to female readers and often served as a major source of content for scrapbooking. The cheap weekly periodical, the miscellaneous column and the scrapbook thus co-evolved as interdependent genre." (Easley, pp. 201 & 205). See Garvey, Writing with Scissors ....; Easley, New Media ....