82. Writing with Scissors: Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe and American Scrapbooks

How did Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemons use scrapbooks to fight unscrupulous publishers who reprinted his work without paying him? Why did celebrities like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony keep scrapbooks? How did abolitionists, suffragettes, and African Americans use scrapbooks to tell their story? Before the era of google and Instagram, how did American use scrapbooks to curate printed stories that contained information they wanted to save for the future?

In this episode, our guest, Dr. Ellen Gruber Garvey explores how Americans from all walks of life created scrapbooks to document, store, critique, and participate in a rapidly changing world of information overload. This episode was recorded as a lecture at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. You’ll have to use your imagination a little to picture some of the types of scrapbooks that Dr. Garvey refers to but you’ll be fascinated by impact scrapbooks had on American history.

We wish to thank our guest Dr. Ellen Gruber Garvey, professor of English at the New Jersey City University and the host for the lecture, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Read more in Dr. Garvey’s book Writing with Scissors American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance published by Oxford University Press. This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of Connecticut Explored, and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan.

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