Michael C. Cohen teaches English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"The Social Lives of Poems situates a lucid and forceful argument around an array of valuable primary sources. Cohen's thorough engagement with recent scholarship on the ballad, nineteenth-century reform movements, and performance studies only highlights the innovations of his own research and the impressive contribution his wide-ranging and rigorous study makes to the study of American literary culture and the value of poems never read or now forgotten." (Early American Literature) "A truly magisterial work, brimming with extraordinary original research. The book is rich, precise, and emphatically various in details, but not lost in them." (Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Amherst College) "Richly grounded in archival research, The Social Lives of Poems in Nineteenth-Century America works outward from individual cases to make broadly important, powerful, and persuasive claims about the central role of poetry in the formation of a nineteenth-century racial and national imaginary." (Eliza Richards, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

• Introduction. How to Read a Nineteenth-Century PoemChapter 1. Balladmongering and Social LifeChapter 2. The Poetics of ReformChapter 3. Contraband SongsChapter 4. Old Ballads and New HistoriesChapter 5. The Reconstruction of American PoetryChapter 6. The Minstrels' TrailNotesIndexAcknowledgments

Michael C. Cohen teaches English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"The Social Lives of Poems situates a lucid and forceful argument around an array of valuable primary sources. Cohen's thorough engagement with recent scholarship on the ballad, nineteenth-century reform movements, and performance studies only highlights the innovations of his own research and the impressive contribution his wide-ranging and rigorous study makes to the study of American literary culture and the value of poems never read or now forgotten." (Early American Literature) "A truly magisterial work, brimming with extraordinary original research. The book is rich, precise, and emphatically various in details, but not lost in them." (Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Amherst College) "Richly grounded in archival research, The Social Lives of Poems in Nineteenth-Century America works outward from individual cases to make broadly important, powerful, and persuasive claims about the central role of poetry in the formation of a nineteenth-century racial and national imaginary." (Eliza Richards, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

• Introduction. How to Read a Nineteenth-Century PoemChapter 1. Balladmongering and Social LifeChapter 2. The Poetics of ReformChapter 3. Contraband SongsChapter 4. Old Ballads and New HistoriesChapter 5. The Reconstruction of American PoetryChapter 6. The Minstrels' TrailNotesIndexAcknowledgments

Michael C. Cohen teaches English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"The Social Lives of Poems situates a lucid and forceful argument around an array of valuable primary sources. Cohen's thorough engagement with recent scholarship on the ballad, nineteenth-century reform movements, and performance studies only highlights the innovations of his own research and the impressive contribution his wide-ranging and rigorous study makes to the study of American literary culture and the value of poems never read or now forgotten." (Early American Literature) "A truly magisterial work, brimming with extraordinary original research. The book is rich, precise, and emphatically various in details, but not lost in them." (Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Amherst College) "Richly grounded in archival research, The Social Lives of Poems in Nineteenth-Century America works outward from individual cases to make broadly important, powerful, and persuasive claims about the central role of poetry in the formation of a nineteenth-century racial and national imaginary." (Eliza Richards, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

• Introduction. How to Read a Nineteenth-Century PoemChapter 1. Balladmongering and Social LifeChapter 2. The Poetics of ReformChapter 3. Contraband SongsChapter 4. Old Ballads and New HistoriesChapter 5. The Reconstruction of American PoetryChapter 6. The Minstrels' TrailNotesIndexAcknowledgments