To emphasize the diversity which characterized American society and culture before 1860, the volume includes chapters on “Black Engagement with Print,” “Black Slave Narratives,” “Catholic Publishing,” “Native Imprints and Readers,” “Spanish Language Publications,” and “Women Writers and Readers.” In this volume published print culture is seen as coexisting with and augmenting other forms of communication cultures involving orality, non-alphabetic inscription, visual imagery, and manuscript production and reception. The volume takes a broad, interdisciplinary approach to publishing, distribution, and reading practices that date from the earliest Native American productions including birch bark scrolls and petroglyphs, to the beginnings of the mass-entertainment dime novel industry just prior to the American Civil War. The various contributors represent several disciplines including American Studies, Communication, English, History, Music, Journalism, Library and Information Science, Religion, and Spanish. The volume contains forty essays authored by as many scholars, including the Zborays, as well as Pitt Professors Jean Ferguson Carr and Stephen L. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, has been released in the United States after first being issued last February in the U.K. Popular Print Culture to 1860, Volume 5 of The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), edited by Ronald J. Zborays’ Oxford History of Popular Print Culture Released in the U.S.

Oxford history of the united states