Boarding Out: Inhabiting the American Urban Literary Imagination, 1840-1860

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments A labor of love, this project has been years in the making, and I have hardly labored alone. Teachers, colleagues, friends, family, and professional acquaintance have lent their varied, vital support along the way. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge their contributions. Boarding Out began as a dissertation at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. If the book before you has evolved much since then, my thinking about boarding still owes a deep debt to the members of my committee. Joy and John Kasson helped shape my American Studies mind even before I became their student in 1999. The subsequent years that I spent learning from them directly were formative. If I have found my way in academic life, it is as a result of their unfailing intelligence , kindness, patience, and encouragement. In the Kassons I have been doubly lucky. Bob Cantwell and Tim Marr were similarly supportive in helping me shape this project at its beginning, and challenged me to think well past the early boundaries that I had drawn for myself. My mentor Philip Gura receives the final mention here. Boarding Out would not exist without him. This book’s dedication only begins to suggest what he has meant to me—what he will always mean to me. My debts are not only doctoral, but personal. Loving my labor, I have been head over heels for my wife, Kari, since the sunny day in Seattle when we met. She sustains me in all my good works. We have more to come. Friends Mike Keller, Paul Baggett, Julie Barst, Jason McEntee, Kathleen Donovan, Grant Farred, Kate Gentry, Bob Gupta, and Bill Rorabaugh were there when being there was needed. They know where there is. Where I would be without the original Faflik five only they know. I have been institutionally supported as well. At the dissertation stage, I received invaluable funding through a Gilder Lehrman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, in addition to an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at The Library Company of Philadelphia. Jim Green at the latter library invested time and attention in me during my month of research there; I am still flattered, and this book has only benefited from him. The members of the research staff at the American Antiquarian Society are an institution unto themselves. Harvard’s Houghton Library opened their archives to me. With their permission, I quote in chapter 3 of xi this study from the unpublished family papers of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Missouri Historical Society likewise grants permission for my citations from the manuscript diaries of Englishman Thomas Butler Gunn. Short stays at the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania complemented early research at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Davis and Wilson libraries. Interlibrary loan staff at the University of Arkansas and South Dakota State University extended my research much further than it otherwise could have gone. Several professional journals, furthermore, played host to my preliminary boardinghouse perspectives before this book’s completion. With their permission, chapter 3 reprises portions of “Community, Civility, Compromise: Dr. Holmes’s Boston Boardinghouse,” New England Quarterly 78, no. 4 (December 2005): 547–69, while chapter 1 expands on “Boardinghouse Life, Boardinghouse Letters,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 40, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 27–47. That brings me at last to Northwestern University Press. Assistant Director Henry Carrigan Jr. showed great faith in this project from day one. I owe him everything, and more. Peter Raccuglia helped me past obstacles great and small. Gianna Mosser oversaw proceedings with an expert’s eye. Paul Mendelson lent his deft editorial hand. I thank you all. The University of Rhode Island’s Center for the Humanities met a portion of the production costs for this book. I thank the Center for its generous support. xii Acknowledgments Boarding Out ...