The origins of a free press in prerevolutionary Virginia : creating a culture of political dissent / Roger P. Mellen ; with a foreword by David Waldstreicher
Prologue: culture of deference -- Print culture in the early Chesapeake Region -- Chesapeake newspapers and expanding civic discourse, 1728-1764 -- The colonial Chesapeake almanac: revolutionary "agent of change" -- Women, print, and discourse -- The Stamp Act -- Thomas Jefferson and the origins of newspaper competition -- Liberty of the press -- Epilogue
Summary
This interdisciplinary study examines the origins of the freedom of the press in Colonial Virginia tracing the development of print culture. It demonstrates how changes in the dominant medium of communication were an important enabler of the cultural development that allowed for the growth of political dissent. Virginia?s traditional culture of deference was gradually replaced by a?culture of dissidence? and from that emerged the first constitutional right for press freedom in the Virginia Declaration of Rights
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-307) and index