Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
A Literary Land-Grab: National Magazine Writing about Asheville, North Carolina During the 1870s
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
In the 1870s, Asheville was discovered by New York magazine editors. Or so it would seem, given the flurry of publications about Asheville that appeared in major national monthlies during the first half of that decade. By 1875, close to a dozen major nonfiction pieces about Asheville had appeared in national periodicals, including works by Constance Fenimore Woolson, Frances Fisher Tiernan (aka Christian Reid), Edward King, and F. G. de Fontaigne, among other notable American magazine writers. And that's not to mention the fictional--or thinly fictionalized--pieces by Rebecca Harding Davis, Mary Noailles Murphree (aka Charles Eggbert Craddock) and others, set in the Asheville region, and which appeared in national magazines around the same time.
Why this burst of literary activity featuring Asheville at this particular time? What led this swarm of writers and illustrators to converge on this small mountain town in the decade after the war?
In a presentation at the 42nd annual meeting of the Appalachian Studies Association, I propose to discuss this body of national magazine writing, which I have been researching. I will show how this literary activity both reflected and promoted Asheville's economic development, and the region's emergence as a tourism center, during the early years of Reconstruction. These writings illuminate the cultural and economic as well as geographic and natural forces that intersected in Asheville at that time. And a discussion of these works can help us--residents, visitors, scholars and tourists alike--to understand Asheville even as it is today.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Kevin E. O'Donnell is Professor of English and the Director of the Environmental Studies minor at East Tennessee State University, in Johnson City.
A Literary Land-Grab: National Magazine Writing about Asheville, North Carolina During the 1870s
In the 1870s, Asheville was discovered by New York magazine editors. Or so it would seem, given the flurry of publications about Asheville that appeared in major national monthlies during the first half of that decade. By 1875, close to a dozen major nonfiction pieces about Asheville had appeared in national periodicals, including works by Constance Fenimore Woolson, Frances Fisher Tiernan (aka Christian Reid), Edward King, and F. G. de Fontaigne, among other notable American magazine writers. And that's not to mention the fictional--or thinly fictionalized--pieces by Rebecca Harding Davis, Mary Noailles Murphree (aka Charles Eggbert Craddock) and others, set in the Asheville region, and which appeared in national magazines around the same time.
Why this burst of literary activity featuring Asheville at this particular time? What led this swarm of writers and illustrators to converge on this small mountain town in the decade after the war?
In a presentation at the 42nd annual meeting of the Appalachian Studies Association, I propose to discuss this body of national magazine writing, which I have been researching. I will show how this literary activity both reflected and promoted Asheville's economic development, and the region's emergence as a tourism center, during the early years of Reconstruction. These writings illuminate the cultural and economic as well as geographic and natural forces that intersected in Asheville at that time. And a discussion of these works can help us--residents, visitors, scholars and tourists alike--to understand Asheville even as it is today.
