1. ‘VILLAINOUS LITTLE PARAGRAPHS’.
- Author
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Epstein, Pamela
- Subjects
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PERSONALS , *AMERICAN newspapers sections, columns, etc. , *PENNY newspapers , *URBAN life , *ETHICS , *PRINT culture - Abstract
This article discusses personal advertisements in nineteenth-century American newspapers, focusing specifically on those published in the New York Herald. It argues that these advertisements are a crucial, although heretofore largely ignored, part of the development of penny press newspapers in America. By exposing intimate relationships in public, personals offered a way for urban dwellers to connect with and understand their neighbors in a city with a rapidly growing, and increasingly anonymous, population. They also became a new kind of ‘fiction’; often romantic, highly stylized, and sometimes even ongoing, personals functioned as short stories for the newspaper audience. However, for critics, the advertisements were dangerous, threatening to lead to the ruin of young people, girls especially. Their complaints reflect a growing concern in this era about the dangers of urban life and loss of control over morality and behavior in large cities. What was most fascinating to readers—the private, apparently illicit lives of neighbors—was the same thing that most frightened moral arbiters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2012
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