1850-1877: Lifestyles, Social Trends, and Fashion: Publications

Timothy Shay Arthur, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There (Philadelphia: J. W. Bradley, 1854)—an influential, best-selling temperance tract;

Casimir Bohn, Bohn’s Manual of’Etiquette in Washington and Other Cities in the Union (Washington, D.C.: Casimir Bohn, 1857)—manners for the new urban middle class;

Lydia Maria Child, A Brief History of the Condition of Women, in Various Ages and Nations, 2 volumes (New York: C. S. Francis I Boston: J. H. Francis, 1854)—revised edition of Child’s The History and Condition of Women (1835), which was highly praised by nineteenth-century feminists as an important compendium of information on the “woman question”;

Child, The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act (Boston: American Anti-slavery Society, 1860)—an abolitionist tract by Child, who had been well known for her stand on human rights ever since the publication of her novel Hobomok (1824), about the marriage of a white woman and a Native American man;

David Christy, Cotton is King, or the Economical Relations of Slavery (Cincinnati, Ohio: Moore, Wilstach & Keys, 1855)—a defense of the antebellum plantation system that introduced the phrase “King Cotton”;

Juliet Corson, The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cooking (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1877)—cookbook by the founder of the New York Cooking School, the first such institution in the United States;

George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters (Richmond, Va.: A. Morris, 1857)—a southerner’s defense of slavery;

Horace Greeley, Hints Toward Reforms (New York: Harper, 1850)—essays on subjects such as temperance, land reform, and education by the editor of the New York Tribune;

Sarah Josepha Hale, The Ladies’ New Book of Cookery: a Practical System for Private Families in Town and Country (New York: Long, 1852)—cookbook by the author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and the leader of the successful campaign for a national Thanksgiving Day;

Hale, Manners; or, Happy Homes and Good Society All the Year Round (Boston: Tilton, 1868)—a popular etiquette book by Hale, who was the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book;

Hale, ed., Women’s Record (New York: Harper, 1853)—Hale’s attempt to compile “a comprehensive and accurate record of what women have accomplished,” proving “that WOMAN is God’s appointed agent of morality”;

Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, edited by Lydia Maria Child (Boston: Privately printed, 1861)—an influential memoir by a slave who escaped to freedom;

Mrs. Manners, At Home and Abroad; or, How to Behave (New York: Evans & Brittan, 1853)—a popular etiquette book;

Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom (New York: Mason, 1861)—observations based on a well-known landscape architect’s travels throughout the South in the early 1850s, including his denunciation of slavery;

Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Southern Tour, May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866 (New York: Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1866)—firsthand observations by a reporter who had covered the war for the Cincinnati Gazette;

Henry M. Robert, Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies (Chicago: Griggs, 1876)—procedures for running business meetings, now known as Robert’s Rules of Order and widely used worldwide;

Victoria Woodhull, The Origins, Tendencies and Principles of Government (New York: Woodhull, Claflin, 1871)—a book that expresses Woodhull’s views on free love, 1871.

H. C. Wright, The Unwelcomed Child; or, the Crime of an Undesigned and Undesired Maternity (Boston: Marsh, 1858)—birth control advice from an advocate of planned parenthood.