Description
This study is based on the development of culturally specific "psyeudopublication" traditions at the Virginia mineral resorts between 1825 and 1860. Larger spas in and around Richmond assisted potential authors to press with narratives of their healing progress. Smaller spas catered to specific areas of the South outside of Richmond, and often catered to specific diseases. This study explores three areas in which distinctly nineteenth century modes of social/literary expression, political analysis, and intense personal examination in the face of disease underwent manuscript circulation at many of the spas. The changes in some of the manuscript vehicles, as well as their functions for writers and readers coming of age in the changing Southern economic, political, and domestic world of post-Jeffersonian America, create conditions that persuaded editors and authors alike to commit the experiential quality of the resort season to print. It explores the appearance of multi-season women's scrapbooks and collective fair copy compilations of lyric poetry, songs, conversation, and discussions of collectively read novels and plays, which "documented" leisurely, socially sanctioned stages of courtship. These made their way into the Richmond press with some regularity. Also of interest are manuscript "journalist" diaries, kept with particular care when politicians used the mineral resorts as a platform for issues or as a campaign stop. Finally, it examines samples of the sentimental yet often harrowing accounts by victims of consumption and other diseases, recounted in letters to relatives or in "on-site" therapeutic journals. Summer 1996, Spring 1999
