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i x This book emerged out of my reading for a different project, as I was attempting methodically to work my way through the many novels of E. D. E. N. Southworth. As I repeatedly came upon anti–capital punishment subplots and incidents in novel after novel, my curiosity led me to look for a context within which to understand Southworth’s commitment to this cause in the scholarship on the anti-gallows reform movement in the antebellum United States. Eventually, this research led me to the largely untold story of the relationship between American literature and antigallows politics. Over the years of my work on this project, many people have helpfully responded to my presentations of this material as conference papers and invited lectures, and numerous others have read drafts of these chapters. I am incredibly grateful to my colleagues in the Department of English at Ohio University. Dozens of these colleagues, too numerous to be individually named here, have attended presentations of some of these chapters as part of our faculty colloquium series, generously read drafts of these chapters and made suggestions for improvement, or have offered encouraging words in the hallways of Ellis Hall. Of those colleagues, I’d like to single out Carey Snyder and Nicole Reynolds for their extraordinary support and former department chair Joe McLaughlin, who never hesitated to support my pursuit of fellowships and release time from teaching as I worked to complete this study. Acknowledgments x a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s Outside of my department, colleagues in the field of American literature have been similarly encouraging. I owe Melissa Homestead and Jane Eberwein my gratitude for their writing in support of fellowship applications . Jerome Loving kindly read and talked with me about the chapter on Walt Whitman. The staff of the American Antiquarian Society was very helpful in my research on the American Newgate novel, and Paul Erickson became an especially useful resource in his willingness to share his knowledge about antebellum American sensation fiction and to point me toward texts relevant to my project. The fellows in residence at the AAS during my stay in 2008 were full of enthusiastic suggestions about the project. The editors and anonymous readers who read article versions of some of these chapters for American Periodicals, Legacy, and Walt Whitman Quarterly Review offered valuable criticism of those pieces and advice for revision that improved the chapters of the book. And, finally, Katy Ryan and Bruce Franklin, who read the manuscript for the University of Iowa Press, were generous in their thorough readings and astute in their advice for revision. The book is improved because of their insightful comments and questions. Some sections of this book were published previously in academic journals. I am thankful to the editors and publishers of those publications for their permission to include that material here. An earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared as “The Politics of Poetry: The Democratic Review and the Gallows Verse of William Wordsworth and John Greenleaf Whittier,” American Periodicals 17.1 (2007): 1–25 (copyright © 2007 The Ohio State University). An earlier version of Chapter 5 appeared as “‘I put my fingers around my throat and squeezed it, to know how it feels’: Antigallows Sentimentalism and E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand,” Legacy 25.1 (2008): 41–61 (copyright © 2008 The University of Nebraska Press). And, an earlier version of Chapter 4 appeared as “‘That I could look . . . on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning’: Walt Whitman’s Anti-Gallows Writing and the Appeal to Christian Sympathy,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 27.1–2 (Summer/Fall 2009): 1–27. I am most indebted to my partner Jeremy Webster, who is always my biggest cheerleader. Without his constant love and support, I would not have been able to complete this book. ...

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