A Very Social Time Crafting Community in Antebellum New England [Paperback]

Karen Hansen's richly anecdotal narrative explores the textured community lives of New England's working women and menboth white and blackn the half century before the Civil War. Her use of diaries, letters, and autobiographies brings their voices to life, making this study an extraordinary combination of historical research and sociological interpretation.

Hansen challenges conventional notions that women were largely relegated to a private realm and men to a public one. A third dimensionthe social spherealso existed and was a critical meeting ground for both genders. In the social worlds of love, livelihood, gossip, friendship, and mutual assistance, working people crossed ideological gender boundaries.

The book's rare collection of original writings reinforces Hansen's arguments and also provides an intimate glimpse into antebellum New England life.

Karen V. Hansenis Assistant Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University.

Based on an extraordinarily rich and varied collection of diaries, letters, and autobiographies of European Americans and African Americans, this book presents the voices and views of unpropertied, unprivileged people and sensitively probes the commonalities and differences in their experiences and perspectives. Hansen persuasively argues that recognizing the 'social' domain illuminates the agency of working people and dissolves the stereotypically gendered public/private dichotomy. Nancy Grey Osterud, author ofBonds of Community

It is a pleasure to welcome Karen Hansen into the first rank of historical sociologists. In this superb model of scholarship, she leads us on an illuminating tour of the social life of literate working people in antebellum New England. Her arena is 'the social'the territory that overlaps with private and public, where the dynamics of friendship, visiting, gossip, and collective worship combine to fashion many of life's great joys and sorrowlÃ%