Acknowledgments; Introduction; Part I: Immigrant Epistolarity; Introduction; 1. Traditions of Inquiry; 2. Forming Selves in Letters; 3. Writing with a Purpose; 4. Using Postal Systems; 5. Establishing Voice, Theme, and Rhythm; 6. When Correspondence Wanes; Part II: Four Lives in Letters; Introduction; 7. Thomas Spencer Niblock; 8. Catherine Grayston Bond; 9. Mary Ann Wodrow Archbald; 10. Dr. Thomas Steel; Abbreviations for Archives and Repositories Consulted; Notes; Collections of Letters Consulted; Index; About the Author
Summary
2008 United States Postal System's Rita Lloyd Moroney Award. In the era before airplanes and e-mail, how did immigrants keep in touch with loved ones in their homelands, as well as preserve links with pasts that were rooted in places from which they voluntarily left? Regardless of literacy level, they wrote letters, explains David A. Gerber in this path-breaking study of British immigrants to the U.S. and Canada who wrote and received letters during the nineteenth century. Scholars have long used immigrant letters as a lens to examine the experiences of immigrant groups and the communities the
