Christmas Past: An Anthology of Seasonal Stories from Nineteenth-Century America

by Thomas Ruys Smith
@ThomasRuysSmith

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.

Interview with the Author

The Gilded Age and Progressive Era 
Christmas Past
12/14/21          47 min

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