Nov 18, 2019
How did Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemons use scrapbooks to fight
unscrupulous publishers who reprinted his work
without paying him? Why did celebrities like Abraham Lincoln,
Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony keep
scrapbooks? How did abolitionists, suffragettes, and African
Americans use scrapbooks to tell their story? Before the
era of google and Instagram, how did American use scrapbooks to
curate printed stories that contained information
they wanted to save for the future?
In this episode, our guest, Dr. Ellen Gruber Garvey explores how
Americans from all walks of life created
scrapbooks to document, store, critique, and participate in a
rapidly changing world of information overload. This
episode was recorded as a lecture at the Harriet Beecher Stowe
Center. You’ll have to use your imagination a little to
picture some of the types of scrapbooks that Dr. Garvey refers to
but you’ll be fascinated by impact scrapbooks had
on American history.
We wish to thank our guest Dr. Ellen Gruber Garvey, professor of
English at the New Jersey City University and the
host for the lecture, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Read more
in Dr. Garvey’s book Writing with Scissors
American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem
Renaissance published by Oxford University Press.
This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of
Connecticut Explored, and engineered by
Patrick O’Sullivan.
To hear more episodes of Grating the Nutmeg, subscribe on
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