Thomas Ruys Smith – författare

In 1836 Benjamin Drake, a midwestern writer of popular sketches for newspapers of the day, introduced his readers to a new and distinctly American rascal who rode the steamboats up and down the Mississippi and other western waterways - the riverboat gambler. These men, he recorded, ""dress with taste and elegance; carry gold chronometers in their pockets; and swear with the most genteel precision.... Every where throughout the valley, these mistletoe gentry are called by the original, if not altogether classic, cognomen of 'Black-legs.'"" In Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men, Thomas Ruys Smith collects nineteenth-century stories, sketches, and book excerpts by a gallery of authors to create a comprehensive collection of writings about the riverboat gambler. Long an iconic figure in American myth and popular culture but, strangely, one that has never until now received a book-length treatment, the Mississippi River gambler was a favourite character throughout the nineteenth century - one often rich with moral ambiguities that remain unresolved to this day.In the absorbing fictional and nonfictional accounts of high stakes and sudden reversals of fortune found in the pages of Smith's book, the voices of canonized writers such as William Dean Howells, Herman Melville, and, of course, Mark Twain hold prominent positions. But they mingle seamlessly with lesser-known pieces such as an excerpt from Edward Willett's sensationalistic dime novel Flush Fred's Full Hand, raucous sketches by anonymous Old Southwestern humorists from the Spirit of the Times, and colourful accounts by now nearly forgotten authors such as Daniel R. Hundley and George W. Featherstonhaugh. Smith puts the twenty-eight selections in perspective with an Introduction that thoroughly explores the history and myth surrounding this endlessly fascinating American cultural icon. While the riverboat gambler may no longer ply his trade along the Mississippi, Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men makes clear the ways in which he still operates quite successfully in the American imagination.

Mark Twain's visions of the Mississippi River offer some of the most indelible images in American literature: Huck and Jim floating downstream on their raft, Tom Sawyer and friends becoming pirates on Jackson's Island, the young Sam Clemens himself at the wheel of a steamboat. Through Twain's iconic river books, the Mississippi has become an imagined river as much as a real one. Yet despite the central place that Twain's river occupies in the national imaginary, until now no work has explored the shifting meaning of this crucial connection in a single volume.Thomas Ruys Smith's Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain is the first book to provide a comprehensive narrative account of Twain's intimate and long-lasting creative engagement with the Mississippi. This expansive study traces two separate but richly intertwined stories of the river as America moved from the aftermath of the Civil War toward modernity. It follows Twain's remarkable connection to the Mississippi, from his early years on the river as a steamboat pilot, through his most significant literary statements, to his final reflections on the crooked stream that wound its way through his life and imagination. Alongside Twain's evolving relationship to the river, Deep Water details the thriving cultural life of the Mississippi in this period, from roustabouts to canoeists, from books for boys to blues songs, and highlights a diverse collection of voices each telling their own story of the river. Smith weaves together these perspectives, putting Twain and his creations in conversation with a dynamic cast of river characters who helped transform the Mississippi into a vibrant American icon.By balancing evocative cultural history with thought-provoking discussions of some of Twain's most important and beloved works, Deep Water gives readers a new sense of both the Mississippi and the remarkable writer who made the river his own.

As the modern celebration of Christmas took shape across the nineteenth century, American writers gave it new meaning in the pages of countless books and magazines. Now, for the first time, this rich anthology brings together some of the most significant of those seasonal stories to retell a forgotten tale of Christmases past.From the authors who helped define a national literary culture, to the popular sentimentalists who negotiated Christmas's position at the center of family life, to the realists who looked to reshape American letters in the wake of the Civil War, and beyond: all varieties of American writers turned to Christmas as an inevitable and potent subject during this deeply formative period in the history of American literature. In Christmas Past, Thomas Ruys Smith brings together a diverse range of voices to showcase the many ways in which Christmas was imagined across the nineteenth century, offering images that echo down to the present. The introduction that frames the anthology provides a new literary history of Christmas, contextualizing the selections and making clear the links both between them and to the wider trajectory of American literature.

Even in the decades before Mark Twain enthralled the world with his evocative representations of the Mississippi, the river played an essential role in American culture and consciousness. Throughout the antebellum era, the Mississippi acted as a powerful symbol of America's conception of itself -- and the world's conception of America. As Twain understood, "The Mississippi is well worth reading about." Thomas Ruys Smith's River of Dreams is an examination of the Mississippi's role in the antebellum imagination, exploring its cultural position in literature, art, thought, and national life.Presidents, politicians, authors, poets, painters, and international celebrities of every variety experienced the Mississippi in its Golden Age. They left an extraordinary collection of representations of the river in their wake, images that evolved as America itself changed. From Thomas Jefferson's vision for the Mississippi to Andrew Jackson and the rowdy river culture of the early nineteenth century, Smith charts the Mississippi's shifting importance in the making of the nation. He examines the accounts of European travelers, including Frances Trollope, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray, whose views of the river were heavily influenced by the world of the steamboat and plantation slavery.Smith discusses the growing importance of visual representations of the Mississippi as the antebellum period progressed, exploring the ways in which views of the river, particularly giant moving panoramas that toured the world, echoed notions of manifest destiny and the westward movement. He evokes the river in the late antebellum years as a place of crime and mystery, especially in popular writing, and most notably in Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man. An epilogue discusses the Mississippi during the Civil War, when possession of the river became vital, symbolically as well as militarily. The epilogue also provides an introduction to Mark Twain, a product of the antebellum river world who was to resurrect its imaginative potential for a post-war nation and produce an iconic Mississippi that still flows through a wide and fertile floodplain in American literature.From empire building in the Louisiana Purchase to the trauma of the Civil War, the Mississippi's dominant symbolic meanings tracked the essential forces operating within the nation. As Smith shows in this groundbreaking work, the story of the imagined Mississippi River is the story of antebellum America itself.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) was one of the most popular American writers at the turn of the twentieth century, and her annual Christmas stories appeared in magazines and periodicals across the globe. Since then, the extraordinary stories that once delighted her legions of fans every festive season have gone largely out of print and unread. Now, for the first time, The Last Gift presents a collection of Freeman's best Christmas writing, introducing these funny, poignant, provocative, and surprisingly timely holiday tales to a new generation of readers.

This book explores what it means to study America in the twenty-first century and what the emergence of the field of New Area Studies means for the development of American Studies.By analysing the meaning of interdisciplinarity, aesthetics, temporality, and periodisation, this book reveals both fields of study through the lens of interdisciplinary cases studies, innovative methodologies, and a global perspective. Exploring the imagined geographies of America across space and time, this book rethinks the meaning and production of place, and questions what —and where—it means to study America now.By addressing the key issues of nation, place and people in this new disciplinary moment, this book will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of American Studies and Area Studies.

Released in 1952, the Anthology of American Folk Music was the singular vision of the enigmatic artist, musicologist, and collector Harry Smith (1923–1991). A collection of eighty-four commercial recordings of American vernacular and folk music originally issued between 1927 and 1932, the Anthology featured an eclectic and idiosyncratic mixture of blues and hillbilly songs, ballads old and new, dance music, gospel, and numerous other performances less easy to classify.Where previous collections of folk music, both printed and recorded, had privileged field recordings and oral transmission, Smith purposefully shaped his collection from previously released commercial records, pointedly blurring established racial boundaries in his selection and organisation of performances. Indeed, more than just a ground-breaking collection of old recordings, the Anthology was itself a kind of performance on the part of its creator.Over the six decades of its existence, however, it has continued to exert considerable influence on generations of musicians, artists, and writers. It has been credited with inspiring the North American folk revival—"The Anthology was our bible", asserted Dave Van Ronk in 1991, "We all knew every word of every song on it"—and with profoundly influencing Bob Dylan. After its 1997 release on CD by Smithsonian Folkways, it came to be closely associated with the so-called Americana and Alt-Country movements of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following its sixtieth birthday, and now available as a digital download and rereleased on vinyl, it is once again a prominent icon in numerous musical currents and popular culture more generally.This is the first book devoted to such a vital piece of the large and complex story of American music and its enduring value in American life. Reflecting the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of Smith’s original project, this collection contains a variety of new perspectives on all aspects of the Anthology.

What is it about certain books that makes them bestsellers? Why do some of these books remain popular for centuries, and others fade gently into obscurity? And why is it that when scholars do turn their attention to bestsellers, they seem only to be interested in the same handful of blockbusters, when so many books that were once immensely popular remain under-examined?Addressing those and other equally pressing questions about popular literature, Must Read is the first scholarly collection to offer both a survey of the evolution of American bestsellers as well as critical readings of some of the key texts that have shaped the American imagination since the nation's founding.Focusing on a mix of enduring and forgotten bestsellers, the essays in this collection consider 18th and 19th century works, like Charlotte Temple or Ben-Hur, that were once considered epochal but are now virtually ignored; 20th century favorites such as The Sheik and Peyton Place; and 21st century blockbusters including the novels of Nicholas Sparks, The Kite Runner, and The Da Vinci Code.

What is it about certain books that makes them bestsellers? Why do some of these books remain popular for centuries, and others fade gently into obscurity? And why is it that when scholars do turn their attention to bestsellers, they seem only to be interested in the same handful of blockbusters, when so many books that were once immensely popular remain under-examined?Addressing those and other equally pressing questions about popular literature, Must Read is the first scholarly collection to offer both a survey of the evolution of American bestsellers as well as critical readings of some of the key texts that have shaped the American imagination since the nation's founding.Focusing on a mix of enduring and forgotten bestsellers, the essays in this collection consider 18th and 19th century works, like Charlotte Temple or Ben-Hur, that were once considered epochal but are now virtually ignored; 20th century favorites such as The Sheik and Peyton Place; and 21st century blockbusters including the novels of Nicholas Sparks, The Kite Runner, and The Da Vinci Code.

Released in 1952, The Anthology of American Folk Music was the singular vision of the enigmatic artist, musicologist, and collector Harry Smith (1923–1991). A collection of eighty-four commercial recordings of American vernacular and folk music originally issued between 1927 and 1932, the Anthology featured an eclectic and idiosyncratic mixture of blues and hillbilly songs, ballads old and new, dance music, gospel, and numerous other performances less easy to classify.Where previous collections of folk music, both printed and recorded, had privileged field recordings and oral transmission, Smith purposefully shaped his collection from previously released commercial records, pointedly blurring established racial boundaries in his selection and organisation of performances. Indeed, more than just a ground-breaking collection of old recordings, the Anthology was itself a kind of performance on the part of its creator.Over the six decades of its existence, however, it has continued to exert considerable influence on generations of musicians, artists, and writers. It has been credited with inspiring the North American folk revival—"The Anthology was our bible", asserted Dave Van Ronk in 1991, "We all knew every word of every song on it"—and with profoundly influencing Bob Dylan. After its 1997 release on CD by Smithsonian Folkways, it came to be closely associated with the so-called Americana and Alt-Country movements of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following its sixtieth birthday, and now available as a digital download and rereleased on vinyl, it is once again a prominent icon in numerous musical currents and popular culture more generally.This is the first book devoted to such a vital piece of the large and complex story of American music and its enduring value in American life. Reflecting the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of Smith’s original project, this collection contains a variety of new perspectives on all aspects of the Anthology.

Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did has captured the imaginations of readers since its first publication in 1872. A classic of American children’s literature, it tells the story of Katy Carr - twelve years old, free-spirited, perennially untidy, endearingly awkward and irrepressibly imaginative. Accompanied by her many siblings, Katy embarks on a series of playful misadventures - when she can escape the watchful eye of her fussy Aunt Izzie - until disaster strikes, and Katy has to learn a series of important lessons about life, happiness and growing up. In time for the 150th anniversary of its first publication, this is the first edition of What Katy Did to provide readers with a full introduction to the text, one which describes a context for both the challenges Katy faces in meeting the expectations of nineteenth-century young womanhood, and a consideration of her ongoing significance in the twenty-first century. A must read for fans of Little Women, this unique edition has been carefully designed to introduce a new generation to Katy and her escapades. Edited by specialists in the genre, it combines aesthetics, accessibility and academic rigour. Hilary Emmett and Thomas Ruys Smith, both based in the School of Art, Media and American Studies at the University of East Anglia, are experts in nineteenth century children's literature and the authors and editors of a variety of books including, most recently, The Oxford Handbook of Charles Brockden Brown (Emmett) and Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain (Smith). Crucially, it has accessibility at its heart: the editors were passionate that this book should be approachable for those with visual impairments and dyslexia but without sacrificing the aesthetic beauty of the finished book for the general reader. This is a valuable edition to be treasured and handed on to future fans of Katy and her world.

Working hard to survive in a harsh world, the Peppers still find joy and love in their little brown house - until a chance encounter with a wealthy family changes their fortunes forever. When it was first published in 1881, Margaret Sidney’s Five Little Peppers was an immediate bestseller. Its account of the five Pepper siblings’ adventures in the American Gilded Age attracted an army of young readers who clamoured for sequels well into the twentieth century. Progressive for its time in its depictions of the children’s lives, this groundbreaking edition will strike a new chord with young readers in the twenty-first century: it is the first version of the book to give readers a full introduction to the text, providing an account of Sidney’s life and times, a full description of the book’s historical and literary context, and a sense of what insights the Pepper family’s extraordinary experiences might provide for our own moment of upheaval. A must-read for all fans of American classics such as Little Women and What Katy Did.

Edited with an introduction by Hilary Emmett & Thomas Ruys Smith in collaboration with students from the Department of American Studies at UEA.Author and activist Lydia Maria Child was a foundational figure in the development of American literature in the early nineteenth century. After her debut novel Hobomok (1824) challenged readers with its representation of interracial marriage, she continued to blaze literary trails for the rest of her life, developing a loyal readership as she confronted the most pressing issues in American life. She wrote novels, poems and short stories, composed housekeeping and parenting manuals, edited abolitionist newspapers and narratives—most notably Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Less well-known is that she almost single-handedly invented a new American literature for children. For decades, and particularly during her time at the helm of groundbreaking children’s magazine The Juvenile Miscellany (1826-1834), Child was a constant companion for young readers across the world.For the first time, this anthology brings together a career-spanning collection of Child’s writing for children which demonstrates the extraordinary richness and range of her vital work in this field. As she shaped the idea of what children’s literature could be and do, Child trusted her young readers to understand difficult questions of social and racial justice, explorations of natural and national history, sentimental domestic sketches, and much more besides. Contemporary readers can now rediscover the delight that the arrival of a new issue of The Juvenile Miscellany brought to the world while grappling critically with the ongoing resonance of these questions in the twenty-first century.

This volume, edited with an introduction by Thomas Ruys Smith (UEA), reproduces some of Mary Sewell's most popular and powerful ballads and stories in verse and gives us a new understanding of the extraordinary woman who wrote them. As a committed philanthropist who was deeply concerned with the suffering of humans and animals alike, Mary would be pleased to know that this edition has been produced in collaboration with Redwings Horse Sanctuary, the proud custodians of Anna Sewell House in Great Yarmouth where Mary lived just after her marriage in 1819. Every copy of this edition sold will contribute directly to Redwings’ mission to value every horse and try to see the world from an equine point of view.

Santa Claus appears throughout popular culture, captivating the imaginations and shaping the wishes of millions of children across the world – but he only came into focus as a social and cultural icon relatively recently, in the nineteenth century.This landmark anthology, the first of its kind, traces his evolution. For the first time, it brings together the most influential and pivotal portraits of Santa Claus, revealing how a simple gift-giver developed into one of the most recognised global figures. Through its groundbreaking exploration of stories, poems, and images, it shines a light on the cultivation of Santa as both a vitally important literary figure and a powerful cultural touchstone who stands at the heart of our seasonal celebrations."Searching for Santa is both a lovely gift book for serious Santa fans and an important resource for anyone studying the history of American children's literature.” Linda Raedisch, author of The Old Magic of Christmas.