Routledge Revivals: The Literary Humour of the Urban Northeast 1830-1890 (1983)

<p><em>The Literary Humour of the Urban Northeast</em> brings together works by such writers as Mark Twain P.T. Barnum Marietta Holley and the literary comedians Artemus Ward and Josh Billings. The northern writers chronicled a fast-moving world dominated by government and business. In this anthology David Sloane recovers satiric writings of the north-eastern humourists of the nineteenth century a literary school that was formed in the crucible of the daily newspaper. Written to appeal to a newly urbanized audience experiencing the impact of the Industrial Revolution these humorous articles sketches and ballads responded to a rapidly changing nation still clinging to rural preconceptions but at the same time beginning to know a sharper more precarious kind of existence. </p>