First Books: The Printed Word and Cultural Formation in Early Alabama

Contents: Satire in the territories: literature and the art of political payback in an early Alabama classic First book: Henry Hitchcock's Alabama justice of the peace "The first production of the kind, in the South": a backwoods literary incognito and his attempt at the great American novel Belles lettres in a new country Antebellum Alabama history in the planter style: the example of Albert J. Pickett B. Meek's great American epic poem of 1855; or, The curious career of the red eagle Historicizing Alabama's southwestern humorists; or, how the times were served by Johnson J. Hooper and Joseph G. Baldwin Caroline Lee Hentz's anti-abolitionist double feature and Augusta Jane Evans's new and improved novel of female education Alabama's last first book: the example of Daniel Hundley